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Home  »  Poetica Erotica  »  A Song: “Phillis, the fairest of love’s foes”

T. R. Smith, comp. Poetica Erotica: Rare and Curious Amatory Verse. 1921–22.

A Song: “Phillis, the fairest of love’s foes”

By Charles Sackville, Earl of Dorset (1638–1706)
 
(1704)

PHILLIS, the fairest of love’s foes,
  Yet fiercer than a dragon,
Phillis, that scorned the powdered beaux,
  What has she now to brag on?
Since while she kept her legs so close        5
  Till she had scarce a rag on.
 
Compelled through want, this wretched maid,
  Did sad complaints begin;
Which surly Strephon hearing said,
  It was both shame and sin        10
To pity such a lazy jade,
  As will neither play nor spin.