To a Lady of Thirty

NO more let youth its beauty boast,

S---n at thirty reigns a toast,

And, like the Sun as he declines,

More mildly, but more sweetly shines.

The hand of Time alone disarms

Her face of its superfluous charms:

But adds, for every grace resign'd,

A thousand to adorn her mind.

Youth was her too inflaming time;

This, her more habitable clime:

How must she then each heart engage,

Who blooms like youth, is wise in age!

Thus the rich orange-trees produce

At once both ornament, and use:

Here opening blossoms we behold,

There fragrant orbs of ripen'd gold.

William Broome

The Rose-Bud

       To the Lady Jane Wharton

QUEEN of Fragrance, lovely Rose,

The Beauties of thy Leaves disclose!

The Winter's past, the Tempests fly,

Soft Gales breathe gently thro' the Sky;

The Lark sweet warbling on the Wing

Salutes the gay Return of Spring:

The silver Dews, the vernal Show'rs,

Call forth a bloomy Waste of Flow'rs;

The joyous Fields, the shady Woods,

Are cloth'd with Green, or swell with Buds;

Then haste thy Beauties to disclose,

Queen of Fragrance, lovely Rose!

  Thou, beauteous Flow'r, a welcome Guest,

Shalt flourish on the Fair-One's Breast,

Shalt grace her Hand, or deck her Hair,

The Flow'r most sweet, the Nymph most fair;

Breathe soft, ye Winds! be calm, ye Skies!

Arise ye flow'ry Race, arise!

And haste thy Beauties to disclose,

Queen of Fragrance, lovely Rose!

  But thou, fair Nymph, thy self survey

In this sweet Offspring of a Day;

That Miracle of Face must fail,

Thy Charms are sweet, but Charms are frail:

Swift as the short-liv'd Flow'r they fly,

At Morn they bloom, at Evening die:

Tho' Sickness yet a while forbears,

Yet Time destroys, what Sickness spares;

Now Helen lives alone in Fame,

And Cleopatra's but a Name;

Time must indent that heav'nly Brow,

And thou must be, what Helen's now.

  This Moral to the Fair disclose,

Queen of Fragrance, lovely Rose.

William Broome