Page:Pacchiarotto and how he worked in distemper; with other poems - Browning (1876).djvu/68

14.
Womankind—"the cat-like nature,
 False and fickle, vain and weak"—
What of this sad nomenclature
 Suits my tongue, if I must speak?
Does the sex invite, repulse so,
 Tempt, betray, by fits and starts?
So becalm but to convulse so,
 Decking heads and breaking hearts?

15.
Well may you blaspheme at fortune!
 I "threw Venus" (Ben, expound!)
Never did I need importune
 Her, of all the Olympian round.