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Home  »  A Book of Women’s Verse  »  Song: “Cease, cease, Aminta, to complain”

J. C. Squire, ed. A Book of Women’s Verse. 1921.

By Aphra Behn (1640–1689)

Song: “Cease, cease, Aminta, to complain”

CEASE, cease, Aminta, to complain,

Thy languishments give o’er,

Why should’st thou sigh because the swain

Another does adore?

Those charms, fond maid, that vanquish’d thee,

Have many a conquest won,

And sure he could not cruel be

And leave ’em all undone.

The youth a noble temper bears,

Soft and compassionate,

And thou canst only blame thy stars,

That made thee love too late;

Yet had their influence all been kind

They had not cross’d my fate,

The tenderest hours must have an end,

And passion has its date.

The softest love grows cold and shy,

The face so late ador’d

Now unregarded passes by,

Or grows at last abhorr’d;

All things in Nature fickle prove,

See how they glide away;

Think so in time thy hopeless love

Will die, as flowers decay.