Classic Poem

With all a woman's virtues but the pox,
Fufidia thrives in money, land, and stocks:
For int'rest, ten per cent her constant rate is;
Her body? hopeful heirs may have it gratis.
She turns her very sister to a job,
And, in the happy minute, picks your fob:
Yet starves herself, so little her own friend,
And thirsts and hungers only at one end:
A self-tormentor, worse than (in the play)
The wretch, whose av'rice drove his son away.
But why all this? I'll tell you, 'tis my theme:
" Women and fools are always in extreme."
Rufa's at either end a common shore,
Sweet Moll and Jack are civet-cat and boar:
Nothing in nature is so lewd as Peg,
Yet, for the world, she would not show her leg!
While bashful Jenny, ev'n at morning prayer,
Spreads her fore-buttocks to the navel bare.
But diff'rent taste in diff'rent men prevails,
And one is fired by heads, and one by tails;
Some feel no flames but at the court or ball,
And others hunt white aprons in the Mall.
My Lord of London, chancing to remark
A noted Dean much busied in the Park,
" Proceed (he cried) proceed, my reverend brother,
'Tis fornicatio simplex , and no other:
Better than lust for boys, with Pope and Turk,
Or others' spouses, like my Lord of York."