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Believing love was all a bubble,
And wooing but a needless trouble,
Damon grew fond of posied rings,
And many such romantic things;
But whether it were Fortune's spite,
That study wound his brain too tight,
Or that his fancy play'd him tricks,
He could not on the lady fix.
He look'd around,
And often found,
A damsel passing fair;
"_She's good enough,_" he then would cry,
And rub his hands, and wink his eye,
"_I'll be enamour'd there!_"

He thus resolved; but had not power
To hold the humour "_half an hour_"--
And critics, vers'd in Cupid's laws,
Pretended they had found a clause,
In an old volume on the shelf;--
Which said, if arrows chanc'd to fly,
When no bright nymph was passing by,
And lighted on a vacant breast;
The swain, Narcissus-like possest,
Strait doated on himself!

If so, his anxious friends declar'd