Classic Poem

To Love in my heart, I exclaim'd t'other morning,
Thou hast dwelt here too long, little lodger, take warning;
Thou shalt tempt me no more from my life's sober duty
To go gadding, bewitch'd by the young eyes of beauty.
For weary's the wooing, ah! weary,
When an old man will have a young dearie!

The god left my heart at its surly reflections,
But came back on pretext of some sweet recollections,
And he made me forget, what I ought to remember,
That the rosebud of June cannot bloom in November.
Ah! Tom, 'tis all o'er with thy gay days —
Write psalms, and not songs for the ladies.
But time's been so far from my wisdom enriching
That, the longer I live, beauty seems more bewitching;
And the only new lore my experience traces
Is to find fresh enchantment in magical faces.
How weary is wisdom, how weary,
When one sits by a smiling young dearie!

And, should she be wroth that my homage pursues her,
I will turn and retort on my lovely accuser —
Who 's to blame that my heart by your image is haunted?
It is you, the enchantress — not I, the enchanted.
Would you have me behave more discreetly,
Beauty, look not so killingly sweetly.