Poem by John Codrington Bampfylde

In Praise of Delia

Cold is the senseless heart, that never strove
With the mild tumult of a real flame,
Rugged the breast that beauty cannot tame
Nor youth's enlivening graces teach to love.
The pathless vale, the long forsaken grove,
The rocky cave that bears the fair one's name,
With ivy mantled over. For empty fame
Let him amidst the rabble toil, or rove
For plunder far to western clime.
Give me to waste the hours in amorous play
With Delia, beauteous maid; or build the rhyme
Praising her flowing hair, her snowy arms,
And all that prodigality of charms
Formed to enslave my heart and grace my lay.

1. Sonnet. On the Abbé Reynall’s History of the Establishments in the East and West Indies
2. Sonnet. To Mr Jackson of Exeter
3. Sonnet. On Having Dined at Trinity College, Oxford
4. Sonnet. On the Evening
5. Sonnet. On a Stormy Sea - Prospect

Print

1309 Views

Last Poems

To Russian version