1   Your pardon, my friend, if my rhymes did offend;      Your pardon, a thousand times o’er:   From friendship I strove your pangs to remove,      But, I swear, I will do so no more. 2   Since your beautiful maid your flame has repaid,      No more I your folly regret   She’s now most divine, and I bow at the shrine      Of this quickly reformed coquette. 3   Yet still, I must own, I should never have known      From your verses what else she deserv’d;   Your pain seem’d so great, I pitied your fate,      As your fair was so dev’lish reserv’d. 4   Since the baim-breathing kiss of this magical miss      Can such wonderful transports produce;   Since the “world you forget, when your lips once have met,”      My counsel will get but abuse. 5   You Say, “When I rove, I know nothing of love;”      ’Tis true, I am given to range;   If I rightly remember, I’ve loved a good number,      Yet there’s pleasure, at least, in a change. 6   I will not advance, by the rules of romance,      To humour a whimsical fair;   Though a smile may delight, yet a frown won’t affright,      Or drive me to dreadful despair. 7   While my blood is thus warm I ne’er shall reform,      To mix in the Platonists’ school;   Of this I am sure, was my passion so pure,      Thy mistress would think me a fool. 8   Though the kisses are sweet, which voluptuously meet,      Of kissing I ne’er was so fond,   As to make me forget, though our lips oft have met,      That still there was something beyond. 9   And if I should shun every woman for one,      Whose image must fill my whole breast—   Whom I must prefer, and sigh but for her—      What an insult ’twould be to the rest! 10   Now, Strephon, good bye, I cannot deny      Your passion appears most absurd;   Such love as you plead is pure love indeed,      For it only consists in the word.