T. R. Smith, comp. Poetica Erotica: Rare and Curious Amatory Verse. 1921–22.
Proferred Love Rejected
By Sir John Suckling (16091642)(From Poems, 1638) IT is not four years ago, | |
I offered forty crowns | |
To lie with her a night or so: | |
She answer’d me in frowns. | |
Not two years since, she meeting me | 5 |
Did whisper in my ear, | |
That she would at my service be, | |
If I contented were. | |
I told her I was cold as snow, | |
And had no great desire; | 10 |
But should be well content to go | |
To twenty, but no higher. | |
Some three months since or thereabout, | |
She that so coy had been, | |
Bethought herself and found me out, | 15 |
And was content to sin. | |
I smiled at that, and told her I | |
Did think it something late, | |
And that I’d not repentance buy | |
At above half the rate. | 20 |
This present morning early she | |
Forsooth came to my bed, | |
And gratis there she offered me | |
Her high-prized maidenhead. | |
I told her that I thought it then | 25 |
Far dearer than I did, | |
When I at first the forty crowns | |
For one night’s lodging bid. | |