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C.D. Warner, et al., comp. The Library of the World’s Best Literature.
An Anthology in Thirty Volumes. 1917.

Song: ‘In vain you tell your parting lover’

By Matthew Prior (1664–1721)

IN vain you tell your parting lover,

You wish fair winds may waft him over;—

Alas! what winds can happy prove,

That bear me far from what I love?

Alas! what dangers on the main

Can equal those that I sustain

From slighted vows and cold disdain?

Be gentle, and in pity choose

To wish the wildest tempests loose;

That thrown again upon the coast,

Where first my shipwrecked heart was lost,

I may once more repeat my pain;

Once more in dying notes complain

Of slighted vows and cold disdain.