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Cite this Item
"Poems, elegies, paradoxes, and sonets." In the digital collection Early English Books Online. https://name.umdl.umich.edu/A47409.0001.001. University of Michigan Library Digital Collections. Accessed May 3, 2024.
Pages
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The Change
Il sabio mude conseio: Il loco persevera.
WE lov'd as friends now twenty years and more:Is't time or reason think you to give o're?When though two prentiships set Jacob free,I have not held my Rachel dear at three.
Yet will I not your levitie accuse;Continuance sometimes is the worse abuse.In judgment I might rather hold it strange,If like the fleeting world, you did not change:Be it your wisdom therefore to retract,When perseverance oft is follies act.
In pity I can think, that what you doHath Justice in't, and some Religion too;For of all vertues Morall or Divine,We know but Love none must in Heaven shine:Well did you the presumption then foreseeOf counterfeiting immortalitie:
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Since had you kept our loves too long alive,We might invade Heavens prerogative;Or in our progress, like the Jews, compriseThe Legend of an earthly Paradise.
Live happy and more prosperous in the next,You have discharg'd your old friend by the Text.Farewel fair Shadow of a female faith,And let this be our friendships Epitaph:
Affection shares the frailty of our fate,When (like our selves) 'tis old and out of date:'Tis just all humane Loves their period have,When friends are frail and dropping to the grave!
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