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The Pleasures of Love and Marriage

A Poem In Praise of the Fair Sex. In Requital for The Folly of Love, and some other late Satyrs on Women [by Richard Ames]

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[Love is not Wounds, nor Darts, nor Fire]
 



[Love is not Wounds, nor Darts, nor Fire]

Love is not Wounds, nor Darts, nor Fire,
Nor an unbridled wild Desire:
That never holds which runs too fast;
What's Violent can never last.
Love's not a thing that's bought or Sold,
It thinks no Dross so base as Gold;
Intrest and Fear alike does hate,
Superior unto all but Fate.
It is not Lust, for Brutes would be,
If so, as much in Love as we,
Who neither Shape nor Beauty mind,
But dully must Preserve their Kind.
Where shall this Stranger then be found,
In what fantastic Fairy ground?
Is it a true or Fancy'd bliss?
Speak he that knows it what it is!
'Tis when two Kindred-Souls agree,
'Tis Vertues sweetest Harmony;
Vertue the Spring of true Content
The Basis, Wit the strong Cement.
'Tis made of tender moving Sighs,
Soft grasping Hands, kind melting Eys,
Magic which all our Cares beguiles,
Enchanting Glances charming Smiles.
Short Tremblings, which no fear discover,
The Guiltless Blush o'th' happy Lover,
These are th' Attendants which declare
The little Winged God is there.
If this Description won't suffice,
I'll read the rest in Stella's Eys.
That the exactest Map will prove,
And therefore Stella I must ever Love.