Classic Poem

I.

Your Beauty, which begets my Love,
Begets but likewise my Despair;
More kind, if less vain wou'd you prove;
Wou'd be less proud, if but less fair:
Yet less I cannot with your Beauty's Pow'r,
Tho', to make less my Grief, and my Days more:

II.

For were your Beauty less, I guess,
My Love perhaps, might grow less too;
But rather than I'd have that less,
More of thy Pride I'd undergo;
Since I must for thee die, the same thing 'twere,
To die for thy Love, as of my Despair:

III.

It is thy cold Indifference,
Which, much more than thy Scorn, I dread,
My ling'ring Pain I have from thence,
I do not live, nor yet am dead;
So pitiful your Cruelty wou'd prove,
Ending my Hopes, if you condemn my Love;

IV.

Yet hold, if I for thee must die,
To Rivals I leave thee behind;
There's no Love without Jealousie,
I, dying for thee, were unkind;
Nay, my Love to thee, but the less shou'd prove,
Since of their Good-Wills, none leave those they love:

V.

Then show me more Love, or Disdain,
I'll live, to show more Love to thee,
For I'd be rather still in Pain,
Damn'd to Despair, than not to be;
Wou'd rather suffer for my Love, thy Fau't,
Than curs'd Annihilation, in thy Thought.