Songs, Song XII

For a shape, and a bloom, and an air, and a mien, Myrtilla was brightest of all the gay green, But artfully wild and affectedly coy, Those her beauties invited her pride would destroy.

By the flocks as she stray'd with the nymphs of the vale Not a shepherd but woo'd her to hear his soft tale; Tho' fatal the passion she laugli'd at the swain, And return'd with neglect what she heard with disdain.

But beauty has wings and too hastily flies, And love unrewarded soon sickens and dies; The nymph cur'd by time of her folly and pride Now sighs in her turn for the bliss she deny'd.

No longer she frolicks it wide o'er the plain To kill with her coyness the languishing swain; So humbled her pride is, so soften'd her mind, That tho' courted by none she to all would be kind.