Page:The Amyntas of Tasso (1770) - Percival Stockdale.djvu/57

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AMYNTAS.
25
Our sport was common; common was our spoil.
But while I thus waged war with animals,
And made fell havock of the brute creation,
Love by degrees stealing me from myself,
Insensibly subdued the mighty hunter.
I found a gradual, and a new affection
Spring in my breast, as grows the blade of grass,
Advancing by degrees from source unknown.
This unaccountable augmenting passion
Made me unhappy but in Sylvia's presence;
And while I gazed upon her, from her eyes
I drank a strange, intoxicating pleasure,
Which, though transporting, left a sting behind it.
I often sighed, and wondered why I sighed;
I was a lover, ignorant of love.
Well did I know it's nature in the end:
I'll tell thee how:—Thyrsis attend my story

THYRSIS.
You paint so strongly that I must attend it.

AMYNTAS.
One day beneath the beechis spreading shade,

Phillis