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Home  »  Poetica Erotica  »  A Logical Song

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

A Logical Song

Anonymous
 
(From The Festival of Love, 1789)

WHY, Chloe, thus squander your prime!
  In debate between fear and temptation?
If adulterous love be a crime,
  Why quarrel with plain fornication?
 
But your beauties with age you may lose;        5
  Then seize the short moment of joy!
If not—then with confidence use,
  What by using you cannot destroy.
 
Come, come, bid our transports begin,
  Ere we lose both our youth and our leisure;        10
Sure ’tis better repenting a sin,
  Than regretting loss of a pleasure.