The few spare hours, which meaner pleasures leave.
No! Let some shade, or your large Pallace be
Our place of meeting, love, and liberty ;
To thoughts, and words, and all endearments free.
But, to those walls, excuse my slow repair;
Who have no businesse, or diversion there;
No daz'ling beauty, to attract the gaze 10
Of won'd'ring crouds to my applauded face ;
Nor to my little witt, th' ill nature joyn'd,
To passe a gen'rall censure on mankind:
To call the yong, and unaffected, fools ;
Dull all the grave, that live by moral rules;
To say the souldier brags, who ask'd declares
The nice escapes and dangers of his wars,
The Poet's vain, that knows his unmatch'd worth,
And dares maintain what the best Muse brings forth :
Yett, this the humour of the age is grown, 20
And only conversation of the Town.
In Satir vers'd, and sharpe detraction, bee,
And you're accomplish'd, for all company.
II
When my last visit, I to London made,
Me, to Almeria, wretched chance, betray'd;
The fair Almeria, in this art so known,
That she discerns all failings, but her own.
With a lowd welcome, and a strict embrace,
Kisses on kisses, in a publick place,
Sh' extorts a promise, that next day I dine 30
With her, who for my sight, did hourly pine;
And wonders, how so far I can remove,
From the beaux monde, and the dull country love ;
Yet vows, if but an afternoon 'twoud cost
To see me there, she cou'd resolve allmost
