Poem by John Dyer

To Clio, from Rome

ALAS, dear Clio, every day,
Some sweet idea dies away:
Echoes of songs, and dreams of joys,
Inhuman absence all destroys.

Inhuman absence — and his train,
Avarice, and toil, and care, and pain,
And strife and trouble. — Oh! for love,
Angelic Clio, these remove!

Nothing, alas, where'er I walk,
Nothing but fear and sorrow talk;
Where'er I walk, from bound to bound,
Nothing but ruin spreads around,

Or busts that seem from graves to rise,
Or statues stern, with sightless eyes,
Cold Death's pale people: — Oh! for love,
Angelic Clio, these remove!

The tuneful song, O speed away,
Say every sweet thing love can say,
Speed the bright beams of wit and sense,
Speed thy white doves, and draw me hence.

So may the carved, fair, speaking stone,
Persuasive half, and half moss-grown,
So may the column's graceful height,
O'er woods and temples gleaming bright,

And the wreathed urn, among the vines,
Whose form my pencil now designs,
Be, with their ashes, lost in air,
No more the trifles of my care.

1. Ah Gentle Shepherd, Thine the Lot to Tend
2. To His Son
3. Paraphrase of Part of Chapter 7 of Ecclesiastes
4. How to Shear Sheep
5. Written at Ocriculum, in Italy, 1725

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