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.

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