While the soft passion plays about your heart,
Before the tickling venom turns to smart,
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Break then, (for then you may,) the treach'rous dart;
Tear up the seeds of the unrooted ill
While they are weak, and you have pow'r to kill.
Beware delay: the tender-bladed grain,
Shot up to stalk, can stand the wind and rain.
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The tree, whose branches now are grown too big
For hands to bend, was set a slender twig;
When planted, to your slightest touch 'twould yield,
But now has fix'd possession of the field.
Consider, ere to love you give the reins,
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If she's a mistress worth your future pains.
While yet in breath, ere yet your nerves are broke,
Cast from your gen'rous neck the shameful yoke!
Check love's first symptoms, the weak foe surprise,
Who, once entrench'd, will all your arts despise.
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Think, wretch, what you hereafter must endure,
What certain toil, for an uncertain cure.
Slip not one minute; who defers to day,
To-morrow will be harden'd in delay.
'Tis love's old practice still to sooth you on
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Till your disease gets strength, and till your
strength is gone.
Rivers small fountains have, and yet we find
Vast seas, of those small fountain'd rivers join'd.
Lock'd up in bark poor Myrrha ne'er had been,
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Had she the progress of her crime foreseen;
But pleas'd with the soft kindling of love's fire,
We day by day indulge the fond desire,
Till like a serpent it has eat its way,
And uncontroll'd does on our entrails prey.
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Yet if the proper season you have pass'd,
Tho' hard the task, I'll use my skill at last;
Nor see my patient perish by his grief,
Because no sooner call'd to his relief.
When Philoctetes first receiv'd his wound,
1
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The venom'd part cut off, had sav'd the sound;
Yet he, e'en after tedious years of grief,
Was cur'd, and brought the fainting Greeks relief.
Thus I, who charg'd you speedy means to use,
Will none in last extremities refuse.
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Remedia amoris. P. Ovidius Naso. New York. 1855.
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