Select poems of Edward Hovel Thurlow :: :: University of Virginia Library

If every leaf of every tree
The power to count were plac'd in thee;
If every wave of every sea;
You might then count, and you alone,
The world of loves, that I have known.

For first at learned Athens score
Fifty loves, and fifteen more:
And, after that, at Corinth write
A very army of delight;
So many loves, why, who can tell,
Where so enchanting women dwell?

By Lesbian, and Ionian flames,
The Carian, and the Rhodian dames,
Pray, how is the account encreas'd?
Two thousand loves the very least.

What do you say? what always love?
Ah! but the bill will larger prove:
What Syros, and Canopus hold,
My tender loves I have not told;
Nor yet, O Crete, what dwell in thee,
Where in a hundred cities free
Love holds his rites and mystery.

What then? you wish me, too, to tell
Those, that beyond the Gades dwell;
Of Bactrians, and of Indians more?
(For darker passions I adore,)
These 'tis impossible to score.