If youthful charms decay with age or pain,
Beauty, thy crouded worshippers how vain!
Why then such crowds of incense round ascend?
Why prostrate monarchs at thy altars bend?
Why earth's and ocean's mighty bounds explore
At once to win thee, and increase thy power?
Let sad example Reason's dictates aid;
Here see what ruin Grief and Love have made;
Even Love, who lives by Beauty's smiles carest,
Basks in her eyes, and wantons on her breast,
With cruel force the fatal shaft employs,
And soonest what he most adores destroys.