Whilst you deride their pangs in barbarous play,
Unpitying see them weep, and hear them pray,
And unrelenting sport ten thousand lives away:
For you, ye fair! I quit the gloomy plains, 10
Where sable Night in all her horror reigns;
No fragrant bowers, no delightful glades,
Receive the unhappy ghosts of scornful maids.
For kind, for tender nymphs, the myrtle blooms,
And weaves her bending boughs in pleasing glooms;
Perennial roses deck each purple vale,
And scents ambrosial breathe in every gale;
Far hence are banish'd vapours, spleen, and tears,
Tea, scandal, ivory teeth, and languid airs;
No pug, nor favourite Cupid there enjoys 20
The balmy kiss for which poor Thyrsis dies;
Form'd to delight, they use no foreign arms,
No torturing whalebones pinch them into charms;
No conscious blushes there their cheeks inflame,
For those who feel no guilt can know no shame;
Unfaded still their former charms they show,
Around them pleasures wait, and joys for ever new.
But cruel virgins meet severer fates;
Expell'd and exiled from the blissful seats,
To dismal realms, and regions void of peace, 30
Where furies ever howl, and serpents hiss,
O'er the sad plains perpetual tempests sigh,
And poisonous vapours, blackening all the sky,
With livid hue the fairest face o'ercast,
And every beauty withers at the blast:
Where'er they fly, their lovers' ghosts pursue,