Wednesday, March 10th, 2010

1694 / London

Sweet Regret

Tags:: 1690s,; John Dryden,; London,; poetry

Young I am, and yet unskill’d
How to make a lover yield;
How to keep, or how to gain,
When to love, and when to feign.

Take me, take me, some of you,
While I yet am young and true;
Ere I can my soul disguise,
Heave my breasts, and roll my eyes.

Stay not till I learn the way,
How to lie, and to betray:
He that has me first, is blest,
For I may deceive the rest.

Could I find a blooming youth,
Full of love, and full of truth,
Brisk, and of a jaunty mien,
I should long to be fifteen.

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Published In

Eros

About the Text

John Dryden, "Song for a Girl." Poet, dramatist, and critic, Dryden excelled at writing public poetry, contributing to a memorial volume for Oliver Cromwell in 1659, composing "To His Sacred Majesty" for the coronation of Charles II in 1661, and publishing "Annus Mirabilis" to commemorate a British naval victory in 1667.

To the moralist prostitution does not consist so much in the fact that the woman sells her body, but rather that she sells it out of wedlock.