These locks, which fondly thus entwine, <br />In firmer chains our hearts confine <br />Than all th' unmeaning protestations <br />Which swell with nonsense love orations. <br />Our love is fix'd, I think we've proved it, <br />Nor time, nor place, nor art have moved it; <br />Then wherefore should we sigh and whine, <br />With groundless jealousy repine, <br />With silly whims and fancies frantic, <br />Merely to make our love romantic? <br />Why should you weep like Lydia Languish, <br />And fret with self-created anguish? <br />Or doom the lover you have chosen, <br />On winter to nights to sigh half frozen; <br />In leafless shades to sue for pardon, <br />Only because the scene's a garden? <br />For gardens seem, by one consent <br />(Since Shakespeare set the precedent, <br />Since Juliet first declared her passion), <br />To from the place of assignation. <br />Oh! would some modern muse inspire, <br />And seat her by a sea-coal fire; <br />Or had the bard at Christmas written, <br />And laid the scene of love in Britain, <br />He surely, in commiseration, <br />Had changed the place of declaration. <br />In Italy I've no objection, <br />Warm nights are proper for reflection; <br />But here our climate is so rigid, <br />That love itself is rather frigid: <br />Think on our chilly situation, <br />And curb this rage for imitation. <br />Then let us meet, as oft we've done, <br />Beneath the influence of the sun; <br />Or, if at midnight I must meet you, <br />Within your mansion let me greet you: <br />There we can love for hours together, <br />Much better, in such snowy weather, <br />Than placed in all th' Arcadian groves <br />That ever witness'd rural loves; <br />Then, if my passion fail to please, <br />Next night I'll be content to freeze; <br />No more I'll give a loose to laughter, <br />But curse my fate for ever after.<br /><br />George Gordon Byron<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/to-a-lady-who-presented-to-the-author-a-lock-of-hair-braided-with-his-own-and-appointed-a-night-in-december-to-meet-him-in-the-garden/
