Matthew Prior Poems

Since we your husband daily see
So jealous out of season,
Phillis, let you and I agree
To make him so with reason.
...

Love! inform thy faithful creature
How to keep his fair one's heart;
Must it be by truth of nature,
Or by poor dissembling art?
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In sullen Humour one Day Jove
Sent Hermes down to Ida's Grove,
Commanding Cupid to deliver
His Store of Darts, his total Quiver;
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In one great
now
, superior to an age,
The full extremes of nature's force we find:
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I know that Fortune long has wanted sight,
And therefore pardon'd when she did not right;
But yet till then it never did appear
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Wiessen and nature held a long contest
If she created or he painted best;
With pleasing thought the wondrous combat grew,
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See, whilst Thou weep'st, fair Cloe, see
The World in Sympathy with Thee.
The chearful Birds no longer sing,
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Well, I will never more complain,
Or call the Fates unkind;
Alas! how fond it is, how vain!
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Recit.
Beneath a verdant laurel's ample shade
His lyre to mournful numbers strung,
Horace, immortal bard supinely laid,
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I sing not old Jason who travell'd through Greece
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