The joys I give but more provoke her breaſt;
She keeps a private drudge[1] to quench the reſt:
How, and with whom, the very birds proclaim
Her black pollution, and reveal my ſhame.65
Hard lot of beauty! fatally beſtow’d,
Or given to the falſe or to the proud;
By diff’rent ways they bring us equal pain;
The falſe betray us, and the proud diſdain.
Scorn’d and abus’d, from mortal loves I fly,70
To ſeek more truth in my own native ſky.
Venus, the faireſt of immortal loves,
Bright as my beams, and gentle as her doves,
With glowing eyes, confeſſing warm desires,
She ſummons heav’n and earth to quench her fires:75
Me ſhe excludes; and I in vain adore
Who neither god nor man refus’d before:
Vulcan, the very monſter of the ſkies,
Vulcan ſhe takes, the god of Wit denies!
Then ceaſe to murmur at thy Mira’s pride,80
Whimſey, not reaſon, is the female guide:
The fate of which their maſter does complain
Is of bad omen to th’ inſpired train.
What vows have fail’d! Hark, how Catullus mourns,
How Ovid weeps, and ſlighted Gallus burns!85
- ↑ The nymph Coronis was beloved by Apollo, but at the ſame time had a private intrigue with one Iſchis, which was diſcovered by a crow.
