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The Counsel. A Song.
Set by Captain Pack.

I.

A Pox upon this needless Scorn:
Sylvia for shame the Cheat give o'er:
The End to which the Fair are born,
Is not to keep their Charms in store:
But lavishly dispose in haste
Of Joys which none but Youth improve;
Joys which decay when Beauty's past;
And who, when Beauty's past, will love?

II.

When Age those Glories shall deface,
Revenging all your cold Disdain;
And Sylvia shall neglected pass,
By every once-admiring Swain;
And we no more shall Homage pay:
When you in vain too late shall burn,
If Love increase, and Youth decay,
Ah Sylvia! who will make Return?

III.

Then haste, my Sylvia, to the Grove,
Where all the Sweets of May conspire
To teach us ev'ry Art of Love,
And raise our Joys of Pleasure higher:
Where while embracing we shall lie
Loosly in Shades on Beds of Flow'rs,
The duller World while we defie,
Years will be Minutes, Ages Hours.

Welcome to the interactive, annotated edition of Aphra Behn's "The Counsel. A Song."

You may click on the buttons to the left to highlight different sets of words, and click them again to de-highlight them.

Additionally, you may hover the pointer over words in the poem to see marginal notes in this space.

Further commentary on the poem can be found below.

Commentary

This poem was initially performed on stage in the second part of Behn's play, The Rover. Part I of The Rover was first published in March 1677, and Part II was published in January 1681 (Link 13-14). According to Janet Todd, the poem was then reprinted under the title "Beauties Triumph," "in broadside form and without attribution, probably the following year" (Todd 397). This page's version of the text is derived from a third publication in Behn's Poems upon Several Occasions.

Paul Salzman notes that the nature of republishing Behn's poems in later collections changes the context of the speaker; another of Behn’s poems, "The Reflection: A Song," was originally spoken by a male character on stage, but Behn had changed the speaker to female when it was published in Poems upon Several Occasions (Salzman 115-16). Salzman concludes that the decontextualization of republishing the poems allowed Behn to present more "conflicting sexual attitudes" than when they were sung on stage.

This poem maintains its original male voice of an unrequited lover (Salzman 117). His initial curse ("A Pox") is an expression of aggression, which Salzman points out is merely a "charade of power," as the loss of Beauty and Youth is later ascribed to Age, a force outside of the speaker's control (Salzman 117).

Works Cited

Link, Frederick M. Aphra Behn. Twayne Publishers, 1968.

"May, n.2" OED Online. Oxford UP, December 2016.

"return, n." OED Online. Oxford UP, December 2016.

Salzman, Paul. "Aphra Behn: Poetry and Masquerade." Aphra Behn Studies, edited by Janet Todd, Cambridge UP, 1996, pp. 109-129.

"shade, n" OED Online. Oxford UP, December 2016.

"swain, n." OED Online. Oxford UP, December 2016.

Todd, Janet. Notes. The Works of Aphra Behn, by Aphra Behn, vol. 1, Ohio State UP, 1992, p. 397.