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Home  »  English Poetry II  »  308. When Lovely Woman Stoops

English Poetry II: From Collins to Fitzgerald.
The Harvard Classics. 1909–14.

Oliver Goldsmith

308. When Lovely Woman Stoops


WHEN lovely woman stoops to folly,

And finds too late that men betray,—

What charm can soothe her melancholy,

What art can wash her guilt away?

The only art her guilt to cover,

To hide her shame from every eye,

To give repentance to her lover,

And wring his bosom, is—to die.