4 But as your charms insensibly To their perfection pressed, Fond Love as unperceived did fly, And in my bosom rest. 5 My passion with your beauty grew, And Cupid at my heart, Still as his mother favoured you, Threw a new flaming dart. 6 Each gloried in their wanton part, To make a lover, he Employed the utmost of his art, To make a Beauty, she. 7 Though now I slowly bend to love, Uncertain of my fate, If your fair self my chains approve, I shall my freedom hate. 8 Lovers, like dying men, may well At first disordered be, Since none alive can truly tell What fortune they must see. SONG. 1 Love still has something of the sea, From whence his mother rose; No time his slaves from doubt can free, Nor give their thoughts repose. 2 They are becalmed in clearest days, And in rough weather tossed; They wither under cold delays, Or are in tempests lost. 3 One while they seem to touch the port, Then straight into the main Some angry wind, in cruel sport, The vessel drives again. 4 At first Disdain and Pride they fear, Which if they chance to 'scape, Rivals and Falsehood soon appear, In a more cruel shape. 5 By such degrees to joy they come, And are so long withstood; So slowly they receive the sum, It hardly does them good. 6 'Tis cruel to prolong a pain; And to defer a joy, Believe me, gentle Celemene, Offends the winged boy. 7 An hundred thousand oaths your fears, Perhaps, would not remove; And if I gazed a thousand years, I could not deeper love. JOHN POMFRET, The author of the once popular 'Choice,' was born in 1667. He was the son of the rector of Luton, in Bedfordshire, and, after attending Queen's College, Cambridge, himself entered the Church. He became minister of Malden, which is also situated in Bedfordshire, and there he wrote and, in 1699, published a volume of poems, including some Pindaric essays, in the style of Cowley and 'The Choice.' He might have risen higher in his profession, but Dr Compton, Bishop of London, was prejudiced against him on account of the following lines in the 'Choice:'-- 'And as I near approached the verge of life, Some kind relation (for I'd have no wife) Should take upon him all my worldly care, Whilst I did for a better state prepare.' The words in the second line, coupled with a glowing description, in a previous part of the poem, of his ideal of an 'obliging modest fair' one, near whom he wished to live, led to the suspicion that he preferred a mistress to a wife. In vain did he plead that he was actually a married man. His suit for a better living made no progress, and while dancing attendance on his patron in London he caught small-pox, and died in 1703, in the thirty-sixth year of his age.