Classic Poem

P ROBLEME of Sexes; must thou likewise bee
As disputable in thy Pedigree?
Thou Twins-in-one, in whom Dame Nature tries
To throw lesse then Aumes-ace upon two dyes;
Wer't thou serv'd up two in one dish, the rather
To split thy Sire into a double father?
True, the worlds scales are even: what the maine
In one place gets, another quits againe.
Nature lost one by thee, and therefore must
Slice me in two, to keep her number just:
Plurality of livings is thy state,
And therefore mine must be impropriate.
For since the child is mine, and yet the claime
Is intercepted by anothers name,
Never did steeple carry double truer,
His is the Donative, and mine the Cure.
Then say my Muse (and without more dispute)
Who 'tis that fame doth superinstitute.
The Theban Wittoll when he once descries,
Jove is his rivall, falls to Sacrifice:
That name hath tipt his hornes: see on his knees
A health to Hans-en-Kelder Hercules .
Nay sublunary Cuckolds are content
To entertaine their Fate with complement;
And shall not he be proud whom Randolph daignes
To quarter with his Muse both armes and braines?
Gramercy Gossip! I rejoyce to see
Shee'th got a leap of such a Barbarie.
Talke not of hornes, hornes are the Poets crest:
For since the Muses left their former nest,
To found a Nunnerie in Randolphs quill,
Cuckold Parnassus is a forked hill.
But stay I've wak't his dust, his Marble stirres,
And brings the wormes for his Compurgators.
Can Ghost have naturall Sons? say Ogg , is't meet
Pennance bear date after the winding sheet?
Were it a Phoenix (as the double kind
May seem to prove, being there's two combin'd)
I would disclaime my right: and that it were
The lawfull Issue of his ashes, sweare.
But was he dead? Did not his soule translate
Her selfe into a shop of lesser rate?
Or breake up house like an expensive Lord
That gives his purse a sob, and lives at board?
Let old Pythagoras but play the pimp,
And still there's hopes 'tmay prove his bastard imp.
But I'me prophane: For grant the world had one
With whom he might contract an union,
They two were one: yet like an Eagle spread,
I' th body joyn'd, but parted in the head.
For you my brat that pose the porph'ry Chaire,
Pope Iohn or Ioane , or whatsoe're you are,
You are a Nephew Grieve not at your state,
For all the world is illegitimate.
Man cannot get a man unlesse the sun
Club to the act of Generation;
The sun and man get man, thus Tom and I
Are the joynt-fathers of my Poetry.
For since (blest shade) thy Verse is Male, but mine
O' th' weaker Sex, a Fancy Faeminine;
Wee'l part the child, and yet commit no slaughter,
So shall it be thy Son, and yet my Daughter.