I ask'd my love, one happy day,
What I should call her in my lay!
By what sweet name from Rome or Greece;
Iphigenia, Clelia, Chloris,
Laura, Lesbia, or Doris,
Dorimene, or Lucrece?
Ah! replied my gentle fair,
Beloved! what are names but air!
Take whatever suits the line:
Call me Clelia, call me Chloris,
Laura, Lesbia, or Doris,
Only, only, call me thine.
Mr. C. told me that he intended to translate the whole of Lessing. I
smiled. Mr. C. understood the symbol, and smiled in return.
The above poem is thus printed in the last edition of 1835, by which the
two may be compared, and the reader will perhaps think that the
alterations are not improvements.