A Lover’s Song

Miss Porden

Translated from the French of the Comte Léandre de **** by Anacreon Lovelorn

If weariness and sorrow
Each gloomy day annoy
If the evening and the morrow
Be pass’d in cloudless joy — 
What the bands of care releases
What each glowing joy increases
Ah, ’tis love that always charms
Love that every grief disarms — 

Glory’s trump with martial swell
Calls me from Glycera far
But I’ll not forget my Belle
In the boisterous fields of war.
When I combat all the while
Mem’ry banquets on her smile — 
Ah, ’tis love that always charms
In festive hours, or fields of arms.

By soft prose again recalled — 
Be it mine again to sip
In a rapturous spell enthrall’d
The rich nectar of her lip

Her converse is a feast divine
Gods might envy when they dine
O ’tis love that always charms
Festive hours, and peace and arms