IMPUTE me not friend, a self-love so extreme,
Like Chaulieu, to make myself always my theme;
But let me that exquisite pleasure enjoy,
Of friendly converse which never can cloy;
When thought meets with thought, o’er the lip it departs,
And both utter freely what they feel in their hearts.
You remember, my friend, how my muse in weak lays,
Whilst yet I was young made some efforts for praise;
You saw calumny vile, all her snakes on her crest,
The spring of my genius with malice infest:
In a horrible dungeon unjustly confined,
Amidst my misfortunes with spirit resigned;
From evil I learned to gather some good,
And the strokes of adversity bravely withstood;
With a constancy which I could never presage,
From the levity common in so tender an age:
Why have I not since been as resolute found?
At slighter attacks I have oft given ground.
How often with tears love has made my eyes flow,
False rogue as you are, without doubt you must know;
You, who with an address which must needs be admired,
The possession of what I love most have acquired;
Who seized on my mistress, and was not content
To get her with ease, and her lover’s consent:
But I loved you, false friend, notwithstanding your fault,
I forgot and forgave as a good Christian ought.
Ah! why do I dwell on ideas long past?
Love once was my bliss, but that bliss could not last.
Now a cruel disease undermines my whole frame,
And it shortly, perhaps, will extinguish life’s flame;
The fates have, I doubt, almost spun out my thread,
And to all sense of pleasure my organs are dead;
I feel with surprise that I’m void of desire,
And my heart glows no longer with love’s vivid fire:
A chaos of thought quite perplexes my head,
My present state’s bad, and the future I dread;
To increase my affliction, my memory’s employed
On ideas of bliss that can’t now be enjoyed:
But what still is worse, I perceive it apace,
That my mental endowments begin to decrease;
The particle subtile of heavenly fire,
Before my corporeal frame does expire:
And can this then be the emanation so bright,
Which flows from the great source of all mental light?
Which lives when our bodies are laid in the earth,
With the organs of sense every mind has its birth;
With them it grows up, and with them feels decrease,
And shall its existence like theirs at length cease:
I know not, but I have good hope it will brave
Death, the ruins of time, and the jaws of the grave;
And that an intelligent substance so pure,
The Almighty intended should always endure.