Thus verse will raise him to the victor's bays;
And verse, that rais'd him, shall refound his praise.
Ye tender Beauties, be my witness too,
If Song can charm, and if my Song be true.
With sweet experience oft a Fair may find
Her paffions mov'd by paffions well defign'd;
And then the longs to meet a gentle swain,
And longs to love, and to be lov'd again.
And if by chance an amorous youth appears,
With pants and blushes fhe the courtship hears;
And finds a tale that must with theirs agree,
And he's Septimius, and his Acme * she:
Thus loft in thought her melted heart she gives,
And the rais'd Lover by the Poet lives.
*With fuch a husband, fuch a wife,
"With Acme and Septimius' life,"
is the conclufion of Cowley's beautiful imitation of Catullus. On these lines an excellent Prelate has obferved, that, to the honour of Cowley's morals and good tafte, by a small deviation from his original, he has converted a loose love-poem into a fober epithalamium; we have all the grace, and, what is more, all the warmth of Catullus, without his indecency. N.