Poem by Alexander Brome

Practick Love

1.

PRithee Caelia tell me, why
Thou fool'st away thy precious hours,
Beauty fades, and youth doth fly,
There's no trust to futurity.
Time present's only in our powers.
She that her present joys doth deser,
Would love at the last, when none will love her,
And so proves her own Idolater,

2.

Either love or say you will not,
For love or scorn's all one to me,
Diversion's pleasant, though it fill not;
Denials vex us, but they kill not,
We're murder'd by credulity,
O 'tis a Ty•anny still to invite,
The mind, and inrage it with faigned delight,
To raise, and then baffle the appetite.

3.

If you'ld let me be but quiet,
Not see your face, nor hear your name?
Though I can't conquer love. I'ld fly it,
For absence, business, friends, or dyet,
Would quench or else divert my flame:
But you're so imperious grown, and so cruel,
'Cause you see that my heart is combustible, you will
Not put out the fire, but still put in fuel.

4.

'Twas not your face, nor yet my eye,
That this devouring flame begot,
If either did alone, pray why
Did you not kill, and I not die
Then when we knew each other not?
'Twas their constellation was my undoing,
You by being beautious, and I by viewing
Paid in contribution to my own ruine.

5.

Come then let's love now while we may,
And let me know what I may trust to,
Desires are murdred by delay,
Our youth and marrow will decay,
And Love, for want of use, will rust too.
Page  41This kissing and courting not any thing spels,
In spite of the story the Platonist tells,
If it were not in order to something else.

1. To his Mistress (LAdy you'l wonder when you see)
2. The Damosel
3. On the Queens Arrival
4. On the Kings Return
5. The Satyr of Money

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