What song shall I chant? while I sing Venus sparrows

What song shall I chant? while I sing Venus sparrows,
Her cestus, her dove,
Shall I hold forth on love?
Source of so many blessings and ills,
On which so many Cupids have blunted their arrows,
And so many poets their quills!
All its pains and its pleasures, its mischiefs and joys,
Have been sung o'er and o'er, by fond girls and vain boys;
Not a single new thought the Pierian spring
On love can inspire:—nor of love will I sing.

While I celebrate uproar, and bottles, and glasses,
That fools think divine,
Shall my song be on wine?
Source of so many surfeits and feasts,
Where so many topers have toasted their lasses,
And so many men become beasts!
Let those describe wine who can drink till they reel,
'Twere folly to write on a theme I can't feel;
How can I, who ne'er drink but what flows from health's spring,
Find words the delight of a drunkard to sing?

While I celebrate men who all comfort and pleasure
Leave at home for a name,
Shall I descant on fame?
Source of so many murders and woes,
Where so many heroes have plunder'd for treasure,
And so many friends become foes!
A stranger to battles, and all their delight,
Fond of peace and its joys, I can't shudder and write:
The best plume that e'er hero bore off from fame's wing
Should not tempt me a scene of such horror to sing.

What shall be my song? Shall I celebrate riches?
Whose grasp can combine
Love, glory, and wine!
Source of each mortal man's rise and fall;
That thing youth and age, high and low, that bewitches!
A nothing, that comprehends all!
Be the theme these of others, they cannot be mine:—
Till love's led by prudence, by temperance wine,
Till war shall sweet peace, and gold charity, bring,
Reason smiles, and forbids me such folly to sing.