Give Me Kind Heaven

The following lines were written at a tea-table, on the author being asked what kind of woman he should prefer.

1 Give me kind Heav’n — if this wide world has one —
2 The girl that loves me for myself alone,
3 Whole soul disdains the subterfuge of art,
4 Attends to nature nor belies her heart;
5 With dauntless freedom to the breast replies,
6 And owns within the language of her eyes.
7 Give me a girl that feels the mutual chain,
8 Nor meanly triumphs in a lover’s pain;
9 Whose reason shakes off ev’ry yoke beside
10 What nature forms, and gentlest love has ty’d;
11 Whose feelings strongly rivetted to mine,
12 Grow to each sense and round my bosom twine.
13 Give me, — or kindly quench the tender fire
14 That wakes the throbbing impulse of desire —
15 Give me the girl whose eyes, with decent ease,
16 Beam on mankind and unaffected please;
17 While, strickly faithful to the voice of love,
18 She scorns all passion but our own to prove.
19 But this deny’d, may Heav’n in pity give,
20 With dull insensibility to live:
21 May cold indiff’rence guide each groveling thought
22 To senseless apathy ’till Nature’s brought;
23 And when my term of vegetation’s o’er,
24 May earth receive me to revive no more.
Common Sense.

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About this text

Title (in Source Edition): Give Me Kind Heaven The following lines were written at a tea-table, on the author being asked what kind of woman he should prefer.
Author: Thomas Paine
Themes:
Genres: occasional poem
Headnote: Federal Gazette, 12 May 1789

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Source edition

Cleary, Scott M., ed. Claeys, Gregory, gen. ed. Thomas Paine Collected Writings. Vol. II. Part 2: Poetry. Princeton: Princeton UP, 2026. 5 Volumes.

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