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Home  »  Poetica Erotica  »  Epigram: “What’s the worth of Health or Living”

T. R. Smith, comp. Poetica Erotica: Rare and Curious Amatory Verse. 1921–22.

Epigram: “What’s the worth of Health or Living”

Anonymous
 
(From Pills to Purge Melancholy, 1719)

WHAT’S the worth of Health or Living,
  If we stint our selves of Bliss;
Grief is but a self-deceiving,
  Choosing may be for what is:
Dozed all Night, and daily weeping,        5
  Zealots think to Heaven to climb;
Thus with Canting and with Sleeping,
  The poor Scots lose all their Time.
 
Give me Love, and give me Wine too,
  For Life’s Cares to make amends;        10
Wit and Poetry Divine too,
  And a charming Female Friend:
In a Moral honest Station,
  To my Grave in Peace I’ll go;
Let the bug Predestination,        15
  Fright the Fool’s no better know.