An Ante-diluvian Love Letter. By a Young Lady.
WHAT thought can represent my vast distress?
What words the anguish of my soul express,
When to my rival you resign’d your charms
And fill’d his richer, but less faithful arms?
These threescore years and ten thy loss I’ve mourn’d,
While Tirzah’s hills my loud complaint return’d:
Those hills which gilded by the sun’s bright ray,
Ill suited my sad soul that loath’d the day.
Thick groves I rais’d, and hid my sorrows there,
And left the rest to bounteous nature’s care.
Her happy hand in every part appears,
And a new Eden rises ‘midst my tears.
Here opening flowers the ravish’d sense invade;
There spreading cedars form a grateful shade;
Soft gliding streams, which murmur as they flow,
And gales that o’er Arabia’s odours blow.
Come up then, my belov’d, oh! come and grace
This blissful spot with a young beauteous race.
With sons and daughters let us fill these groves,
Soft pledges of their parent’s faithful loves.
Daughter of Zilpah, think on life’s short date;
To a poor thousand years ’tis fix’d by fate.
How soon are beauty’s transient glories past;
Its fading bloom will scarce four centuries last.
So the fair cedar on the mountains height
Displays its spreading branches to the sight:
When worn with age, it falls, nor thought of more
Till some young shoot, its memory restore,
Which with increasing verdure still may rise,
And like its parent tree, invade the skies.
Think well on this, then haste to make me blest;
Be happy now, and leave to fate the rest.