Classic Poem

Nay, Albius, a truce to this sighing and grieving!
Is Glycera worth all this tempest of woe?
Why flatter her, lachrymose elegies weaving,
Because she is false for a youthfuller beau?

There 's Lycoris, the maid with the small rounded forehead,
For Cyrus is wasting by inches away;
Whilst for Pholoi he, with a passion as torrid,
Consumes, and to him she 'll have nothing to say.

The she-goats, in fact, might be sooner expected
Apulia's wolves for their partners to take,
Than a girl so divine to be ever connected
With such an abandoned and pitiful rake.

Such caprices hath Venus, who, rarely propitious,
Delights in her fetters of iron to bind
Those pairs whom she sees, with a pleasure malicious,
Unmatched both in fortune, and figure, and mind.

I, myself, wooed by one that was truly a jewel,
In thraldom was held, which I cheerfully bore,
By that common chit, Myrtale, though she was cruel
As waves that indent the Calabrian shore.