Classic Poem

If you can count the leaves of the trees,
Or the foaming waves of the untamed seas,
Then will I entrust to you alone
To reckon the amours I have known.
Take at Athens twenty mistresses,
And then you may add fifteen to these.
Put me a countless number down
At Corinth, that famed Achæan town,
Where the women are so dangerously fair
From falling in love one can't escape there.
My Lesbian I will now indite,
Next Ionian and Carian; and you may write
Many at Rhodes, all my heart's delight.
The sum when computed carefully
Will about two thousand prove to be.
What! do you think the list is done?
Why, good my friend, I have just begun.
I've yet to mention my Syrian fair,
With their tender ways and coquettish air.
My loves of Canopus, and those of Crete
Where Lord Love holdeth his revels sweet.
I have not told you of those at Cadiz,
A town far-famed for its lovely ladies.
My Bactrian fair you must yet enroll,
And the Indian flames that fire my soul.