paphian🔊

Cease admiration, sit to Cupid's feast, / The preparation to Paphian dalliance.

I lay, as it were, in the Paphian bower of bliss, in a state of exquisite sensations quite impossible to describe.

People passed, but they held me not. Paphian eyes rayed upon me, and left me unscathed.

Then thus incensed, the Paphian queen replies: / "Obey the power from whom thy glories rise: / Should Venus leave thee, every charm must fly, / Fade from thy cheek, and languish in thy eye. / Cease to provoke me, lest I make thee more / The world’s aversion, than their love before; / Now the bright prize for which mankind engage, / Than, the sad victim, of the public rage."

They reach'd the hotel: forth stream'd from the front door / A tide of well-clad waiters, and around / The mob stood, and as usual several score / Of those pedestrian Paphians who abound / In decent London when the daylight's o'er; / Commodious but immoral, they are found / Useful, like Malthus, in promoting marriage.

A smile I had learned to know elsewhere lurked at one corner of my paphian's mouth.