The Damp
- When I am dead, and doctors know not why,
- And my friends' curiosity
- Will have me cut up to survey each part,—
- When they shall find your picture in my heart,
- You think a sudden damp of love
- Will through all their senses move,
- And work on them as me, and so prefer
- Your murder to the name of massacre.
-
- Poor victories! But if you dare be brave,
- And pleasure in your conquest have,
- First kill th' enormous giant, your Disdain,
- And let th' enchantress Honour next be slain,
- And like a Goth and Vandal rise,
- Deface records and histories
- Of your own arts and triumphs over men,
- And, without such advantage, kill me then.
-
- For I could muster up as well as you
- My giants, and my witches too,
- Which are vast Constancy and Secretness;
- But these I neither look for nor profess.
- Kill me as woman, let me die
- As a mere man; do you but try
- Your passive valour, and you shall find then,
- Naked you have odds enough of any man.
From: Songs and Sonnets, 1633.
- --oOo-- -