Classic Poem

What gloomy priest, or melancholy maid,
Of their own guilty consciences afraid,
Presumes to persecute a blooming fair,
And make in doggrel verse her soul despair?
With superstitious fears let fools be shamm'd;
Without a hell, such poets must be damn'd.
Why was the great Creator's art display'd
To form, like thee, some fair enchanting maid;
Except it wisely was ordain'd above,
To make his creatures happy in their love?
Then let the bigot rail, and prude accuse;
Yet envy the rank pleasure of the stews:
Starve o'er the feast, which nature kindly gave,
And live to their fierce appetites a slave!
What! is this boasted honour of your sex,
To curse yourselves, and all mankind to vex?
How many nymphs their happiness have sold,
To live with men they scorn, for sordid gold?
And been most wretched prostitutes for life,
Tho' gilded with the specious name of wife?

Delia , to thee, these candid lines are sent,
To spurn the fool, that can such malice vent.
Let him rail on, and triumph in his spleen!
His folly, not thy want of worth, is seen.
Without the common place of wit, or sense,
Numbers, or rhime, a poet to commence,
Is e'en below the world's contempt to sink:
Then let him damn himself with pen and ink.