- The Welcome
- Abraham Cowley
- Exported from Wikisource on 02/15/20
- Go, let the fatted calf be kill’d;
- My prodigal’s come home at last,
- With novel resolutions fill’d
- And fill’d with sorrow for the past:
- No more will burn with love or wine;
- But quite has left his women and his swine.
- Welcome, ah! welcome, my poor heart!
- Welcome! I little thought, I’ll swear
- (‘Tis now so long since we did part)
- Ever again to see thee here:
- Dear wanderer! Since from me you fled,
- How often have I heard that thou wert dead!
- Hast thou not found each woman’s breast
- (The lands where thou hast travelled)
- Either by savages possest,
- Or wild and uninhabited?
- What joy could'st take, or what repose,
- In countries so unciviliz’d as those?
- Lust, the scorching dog-star, here
- Rages with immoderate heat;
- Whilst pride, the rugged Northern bear,
- In others makes the cold too great:
- And, where these are temperate known
- The soil’s all barren sand or rocky stone.
- When once or twice you chanced to view
- A rich, well-govern’d heart,
- Like China, it admitted you
- But to the frontier-part
- From Paradise shut for evermore,
- What good is’t that an angel kept the door?
- Well fare the pride, and the disdain,
- And vanities, with beauty join'd;
- I ne'er had seen this heart again,
- If any fair-one had been kind:
- My dove, but once let loose, I doubt
- Would ne'er return, had not the flood been out.
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