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Home  »  Poetica Erotica  »  My Days, My Months, My Years

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

My Days, My Months, My Years

By John Attey (d. 1640)
 
(From First Book of Airs, 1622)

MY days, my months, my years
  I spend about a moment’s gain,
A joy that in th’ enjoying ends,
  A fury quickly slain;
 
A frail delight, like that wasp’s life        5
  Which now both frisks and flies,
And in a moment’s wanton strife
  It faints, it pants, it dies.
 
And when I charge, my lance in rest,
  I triumph in delight,        10
And when I have the ring transpierced
  I languish in despite;
 
Or like one in a lukewarm bath,
  Light-wounded in a vein,
Spurts out the spirits of his life        15
  And fainteth without pain.