These locks, which fondly thus entwine,   In firmer chains our hearts confine,      Than all th’ unmeaning protestations      Which swell with nonsense, love orations.   Our love is fix’d, I think we’ve proved it;   Nor time, nor place, nor art have mov’d it;      Then wherefore should we sigh and whine,      With groundless jealousy repine;   With silly whims, and fancies frantic,   Merely to make our love romantic?      Why should you weep, like Lydia Languish,      And fret with self-created anguish?   Or doom the lover you have chosen,   On winter to nights to sigh half frozen;      In leafless shades, to sue for pardon,      Only because the scene’s a garden?   For gardens seem, by one consent,   (Since Shakespeare set the precedent;      Since Juliet first declar’d her passion)      To form the place of assignation.   Oh! would some modern muse inspire,   And set her by a sea-coal fire;      Or had the bard at Christmas written,      And laid the scene of love in Britain;   He surely, in commiseration,   Had chang’d the place of declaration.      In Italy, I’ve no objection,      Warm nights are proper for reflection;   But here our climate is so rigid,   That love itself, is rather frigid:      Think on our chilly situation,      And curb this rage for imitation.   Then let us meet, as oft we’ve done,   Beneath the influence of the sun;      Or, if at midnight I must meet you,      Within your mansion let me greet you:   There, we can love for hours together,   Much better, in such snowy weather,      Than plac’d in all th’ Arcadian groves,      That ever witness’d rural loves;   Then, if my passion fail to please,   Next night I’ll be content to freeze;      No more I’ll give a loose to laughter,      But curse my fate, for ever after. * (Poem was about Julia Leacroft)