Page:Hesperides Vol 2.djvu/79

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Go on with Sylla's fortune; let thy fate
Make thee like him, this, that way fortunate:
Apollo's image side with thee to bless
Thy war (discreetly made) with white success.
Meantime thy prophets watch by watch shall pray,
While young Charles fights, and fighting wins the day:
That done, our smooth-paced poems all shall be
Sung in the high doxology[1] of thee.
Then maids shall strew thee, and thy curls from them
Receive with songs a flowery diadem.
Sylla's fortune, in allusion to Sylla's surname of Felix.


757. A SONG.

Burn, or drown me, choose ye whether,
So I may but die together;
Thus to slay me by degrees
Is the height of cruelties.
What needs twenty stabs, when one
Strikes me dead as any stone?
O show mercy then, and be
Kind at once to murder me.


758. PRINCES AND FAVOURITES.

Princes and fav'rites are most dear, while they
By giving and receiving hold the play;
But the relation then of both grows poor,
When these can ask, and kings can give no more.


  1. Doxology, glorifying.