English Poetry I: From Chaucer to Gray.
The Harvard Classics. 1909–14.
John Dryden
263. Song to a Fair Young Lady, Going Out of the Town in the Spring
A
So long delays her flowers to bear;
Why warbling birds forget to sing,
And winter storms invert the year:
Chloris is gone; and fate provides
To make it Spring where she resides.
She cast not back a pitying eye:
But left her lover in despair
To sigh, to languish, and to die:
Ah! how can those fair eyes endure
To give the wounds they will not cure?
A face that can all hearts command,
That all religions can invade,
And change the laws of every land?
Where thou hadst placed such power before,
Thou shouldst have made her mercy more.
Adoring crowds before her fall;
She can restore the dead from tombs
And every life but mine recall.
I only am by Love design’d
To be the victim for mankind.