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. Thomas Paine Alexander Huber Editor Bodleian Libraries, University of Oxford
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Eighteenth-Century Poetry Archive
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Oxford This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License. Cleary, Scott M., ed. Claeys, Gregory, gen. ed. Thomas Paine Collected Writings. Vol. II. Part 2: Poetry. Princeton Princeton UP 2026 pp. []-[]. 5 Volumes.

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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 . Common Sense .