e
With fawning wanton with the Moone,
Or with an amorous complaint
Get prostitute your very saint;
Not that we are not mortal, or
Fly VENUS altars, and<49.10> abhor
The selfesame knack, for which you pine;
But we (defend us!) are divine,
[Not] female, but madam born,<49.11> and come
From a right-honourable wombe.
Shal we then mingle with the base,
And bring a silver-tinsell race?
Whilst th' issue noble wil not passe
The gold alloyd<49.12> (almost halfe brasse),
And th' blood in each veine doth appeare,
Part thick Booreinn, part Lady Cleare;
Like to the sordid insects sprung
From Father Sun and Mother Dung:
Yet lose we not the hold we have,
But faster graspe the trembling slave;
Play at baloon with's heart, and winde
The strings like scaines, steale into his minde
Ten thousand false<49.13> and feigned joyes
Far worse then they; whilst, like whipt boys,
After this scourge hee's hush with toys.

This<49.14> heard, Sir, play stil in her eyes,
And be a dying, live<49.15> like flyes
Caught by their angle-legs, and whom
The torch laughs peece-meale to consume.

<49.1> i.e. THAT hath sainted, &c.

<49.2> So the Editor's MS. copy already described; the printed
copy has BONDS.

<49.3> So Editor's MS. Printed copy has--
"The Love of Great Ones? 'Tis a Love."

<<49.4>> Subtle--Editor's MS.

<49.5> Semele she--Editor's MS.

<49.6> She--Ibid.

<49.7> Dombe--LUCASTA.

<49.8> BESS is used in the following passage as a phrase
for a sort of female TOM-O-BEDLAM--

"We treat mad-Bedlams, TOMS and BESSES,
With ceremonies and caresses!"
Dixon's CANIDIA, 1683, part i. canto 2.

And the word seems also to have been employed to signify
the loose women who, in early times, made Covent Garden
and its neighbourhood their special haunt. See Cotgrave's
WITS INTERPRETER, 1662, p. 236. But here "naked Besse,"
means only a woman who, in contradistinction to a lady of rank,
has no adventitious qualities to recommend her.

<49.9> Original reads HER.

<49.10> Altars, or--LUCASTA.

<49.11> Borne--LUCASTA.

<49.12> Allay'd--LUCASTA.

<49.13> So Editor's MS. LUCASTA has HELLS.

<49.14> From this word down to LIVES is omitted in the MS. copy.

<49.15> Original has LIVES.

TO ALTHEA.
FROM PRISON.
SONG.
SET BY DR. JOHN WILSON.<50.1>

I.
When love with unconfined wings
Hovers within my gates;
And my divine AL