Busy, curious, thirsty fly! Drink with me and drink as I: Freely welcome to my cup, Couldst thou sip and sip it up: Make the most of life you may, Life is short and wears away. Both alike are mine and thine Hastening quick to their decline: Thine’s a summer, mine’s no more, Though repeated to threescore. Threescore summers, when they’re gone, Will appear as short as one! JOHN GAY 1688-1732 _439._ _Song_ O ruddier than the cherry! O sweeter than the berry! O nymph more bright Than moonshine night, Like kidlings blithe and merry! Ripe as the melting cluster! No lily has such lustre; Yet hard to tame As raging flame, And fierce as storms that bluster! ALEXANDER POPE 1688-1744 _440._ _On a certain Lady at Court_ I know a thing that’s most uncommon; (Envy, be silent and attend!) I know a reasonable woman, Handsome and witty, yet a friend. Not warp’d by passion, awed by rumour; Not grave through pride, nor gay through folly; An equal mixture of good-humour And sensible soft melancholy. ‘Has she no faults then (Envy says), Sir?’ Yes, she has one, I must aver: When all the world conspires to praise her, The woman’s deaf, and does not hear. _441._ _Elegy to the Memory of an Unfortunate Lady_ What beck’ning ghost, along the moonlight shade Invites my steps, and points to yonder glade? ’Tis she!--but why that bleeding bosom gored, Why dimly gleams the visionary sword? O, ever beauteous, ever friendly! tell, Is it, in Heav’n, a crime to love too well? To bear too tender or too firm a heart, To act a lover’s or a Roman’s part? Is there no bright reversion in the sky For those who greatly think, or bravely die? Why bade ye else, ye Pow’rs! her soul aspire Above the vulgar flight of low desire? Ambition first sprung from your blest abodes; The glorious fault of angels and of gods; Thence to their images on earth it flows, And in the breasts of kings and heroes glows. Most souls, ’tis true, but peep out once an age, Dull sullen pris’ners in the body’s cage: Dim lights of life, that burn a length of years, Useless, unseen, as lamps in sepulchres; Like Eastern kings a lazy state they keep, And close confined to their own palace, sleep. From these perhaps (ere Nature bade her die) Fate snatch’d her early to the pitying sky. As into air the purer spirits flow, And sep’rate from their kindred dregs below, So flew the soul to its congenial place, Nor left one virtue to redeem her race. But thou, false guardian of a charge too good! Thou, mean deserter of thy brother’s blood! See on these ruby lips the trembling breath, These cheeks now fading at the blast of Death: Cold is that breast which warm’d the world before,