To His Mistress

YOUR husband will be with us at the Treat;

May that be the last Supper he shall Eat.

And am poor I, a Guest invited there,

Only to see, while he may touch the Fair?

To see you Kiss and Hug your nauseous Lord,

While his lewd Hand descends below the Board?

Now wonder not that Hippodamia's Charms,

At such a sight, the Centaurs urged to Arms;

Seeing Thou Art Fair

SEEING thou art fair, I bar not thy false playing,

But let not me poor soul know of thy straying.

Nor do I give thee counsel to live chaste,

But that thou would'st dissemble, when 'tis past.

She hath not trod awry, that doth deny it.

Such as confess have lost their good names by it.

What madness is't to tell night-pranks by day?

And hidden secrets openly to bewray?

Either She Was A Fool

EITHER she was fool, or her attire was bad,

Or she was not the wench I wished to have had.

Idly I lay with her, as if I loved not,

And like a burden grieved the bed that moved not.

Though both of us performed our true intent,

Yet could I not cast anchor where I meant.

She on my neck her ivory arms did throw,

Her arms far whiter than the Scythian snow.

Pygmalion And The Statue

PYGMALION loathing their lascivious Life,

Abhorred all Womankind, but most a Wife:

So single chose to live, and shunned to wed,

Well pleased to want a Consort of his Bed.

Yet fearing Idleness, the Nurse of Ill,

In Sculpture exercised his happy Skill;

And carved in Ivory such a Maid, so fair,

As Nature could not with his Art compare,

On fidelity

I don't ask you to be faithful - you're beautiful, after all -

but just that I be spared the pain of knowing.

I make no stringent demands that you should really be chaste,

but only that you try to cover up.

If a girl can claim to be pure, it's the same as being pure:

it's only admitted vice that makes for scandal.

What madness, to confess by day what's wrapped in night,

and what you've done in secret, openly tell!

Magic

YE elves of hills, brooks, standing lakes, and groves,

And ye that on the sands with printless foot

Do chase the ebbing Neptune, and do fly him

When he comes back, you demi-puppets that

By moonshine do the green sour ringlets make,

Whereof the ewe not bites; and you whose pastime

Is to make midnight mushrooms, that rejoice

To hear the solemn curfew; by whose aid,

Salmacis And Hermaphroditus

HOW Salmacis with weak enfeebling streams

Softens the body, and unnerves the limbs,

And what the secret cause shall here be shown;

The cause is secret, but the effect is known.

The Naiads nurst an infant heretofore,

That Cytherea once to Hermes bore;

From both the illustrious authors of his race

Metamorphoses: Book The Fourteenth

NOW Glaucus, with a lover's haste, bounds o'er

                  The swelling waves, and seeks the Latian shore.

                  Messena, Rhegium, and the barren coast

                  Of flaming Aetna, to his sight are lost:

                  At length he gains the Tyrrhene seas, and views

                  The hills where baneful philters Circe brews;

                  Monsters, in various forms, around her press;

                  As thus the God salutes the sorceress.

Metamorphoses: Book The Eleventh

HERE, while the Thracian bard's enchanting strain

                  Sooths beasts, and woods, and all the listn'ing

                      plain,

                  The female Bacchanals, devoutly mad,

                  In shaggy skins, like savage creatures, clad,

                  Warbling in air perceiv'd his lovely lay,

                  And from a rising ground beheld him play.

                  When one, the wildest, with dishevel'd hair,

Metamorphoses: Book The Seventh

THE Argonauts now stemm'd the foaming tide,

                  And to Arcadia's shore their course apply'd;

                  Where sightless Phineus spent his age in grief,

                  But Boreas' sons engage in his relief;

                  And those unwelcome guests, the odious race

                  Of Harpyes, from the monarch's table chase.

                  With Jason then they greater toils sustain,

                  And Phasis' slimy banks at last they gain,

Metamorphoses: Book The Sixth

PALLAS, attending to the Muse's song,

                  Approv'd the just resentment of their wrong;

                  And thus reflects: While tamely I commend

                  Those who their injur'd deities defend,

                  My own divinity affronted stands,

                  And calls aloud for justice at my hands;

                  Then takes the hint, asham'd to lag behind,

                  And on Arachne' bends her vengeful mind;

Metamorphoses: Book The Thirteenth

THE chiefs were set; the soldiers crown'd the

                      field:

                  To these the master of the seven-fold shield

                  Upstarted fierce: and kindled with disdain.

                  Eager to speak, unable to contain

                  His boiling rage, he rowl'd his eyes around

                  The shore, and Graecian gallies hall'd a-ground.

       The        Then stretching out his hands, O Jove, he cry'd,