The Hesperides & Noble Numbers/Hesperides/To His Mistresses (Help me! help me! now I call)

by Robert Herrick

For works with similar titles, see To His Mistresses.

19. TO HIS MISTRESSES.

Help me! help me! now I call
To my pretty witchcrafts all;
Old I am, and cannot do
That I was accustomed to.
Bring your magics, spells, and charms,
To enflesh my thighs and arms.
Is there no way to beget
In my limbs their former heat?
Æson had, as poets feign,
Baths that made him young again:
Find that medicine, if you can,
For your dry decrepit man
Who would fain his strength renew,
Were it but to pleasure you.

Æson, rejuvenated by Medea; see Ovid, Met. vii.