PRELUDES

Keep your undrest, familiar style

For strangers, but respect your friend,

Her most, whose matrimonial smile

Is and asks honour without end.

‘ Tis found, and needs it must so be,

That life from love's allegiance flags,

When love forgets his majesty

In sloth's unceremonious rags.

Let love make home a gracious Court;

There let the world's rude, hasty ways

Be fashion'd to a loftier port,

And learn to bow and stand at gaze;

And let the sweet respective sphere

Of personal worship there obtain

Circumference for moving clear,

None treading on another's train.

This makes that pleasures do not cloy,

And dignifies our mortal strife

With calmness and considerate joy,

Befitting our immortal life.