Classic Poem

What greater torment ever could have been,
Than to enforce the fair to live retired?
For what is beauty if it be not seen?
Or what is 't to be seen if not admired,
And though admired, unless in love desired?
Never were cheeks of roses, locks of amber,
Ordained to live imprisoned in a chamber.

Nature created beauty for the view,
Like as the fire for heat, the sun for light;
The fair do hold this privilege as due
By ancient charter, to live most in sight,
And she that is debarred it, hath not right.
In vain our friends from this do us dehort,
For beauty will be where is most resort.

Witness the fairest streets that Thames doth visit,
The wondrous concourse of the glitt'ring fair;
For what rare woman decked with beauty is it
That thither covets not to make repair?
The solitary country may not stay her;
Here is the center of all beauties best,
Excepting Delia, left t' adorn the west.

Here doth the curious with judicial eyes
Contemplate beauty gloriously attired;
And herein all our chiefest glory lies,
To live where we are praised and most desired.
O! how we joy to see ourselves admired,
Whilst niggardly our favours we discover;
We love to be beloved, yet scorn the lover.

Yet would to God my foot had never moved
From country safety, from the fields of rest,
To know the danger to be highly loved,
And live in pomp to brave among the best;
Happy for me, better had I been blest,
If I unluckily had never strayed,
But lived at home a happy country maid,

Whose unaffected innocency thinks
No guileful fraud, as doth the courtly liver;
She's decked with truth; the river where she drinks
Doth serve her for her glass, her counsel-giver;
She loves sincerely, and is loved ever;
Her days are peace, and so she ends her breath--
True life, that knows not what's to die till death.

So should I never have been regist'red
In the black book of the unfortunate,
Nor had my name enrolled with maids misled,
Which brought their pleasures at so high a rate;
Nor had I taught, through my unhappy fate,
This lesson, which myself learnt with expense,
How most it hurts that most delights the sense.