At your entreaty, I at last have writ
This whimsy, that has nigh nonplussed my wit:
The toy I’ve long enjoyed, if it may
Be called t’enjoy, a thing we wish away;
But yet no more its character can give,
Than tell the minutes that I have to live:
’Tis a fantastic ill, a loathed disease,
That can no sex, no age, no person please:
Men strive to gain it, but the way they choose
T’obtain their wish, that and the wish doth lose; [10]
Our thoughts are still uneasy, till we know
What ’tis, and why it is desired so:
But th’first unhappy knowledge that we boast,
Is that we know, the valued trifle’s lost:
Thou dull companion of our active years,
That chill’st our warm blood with thy frozen fears:
How is it likely thou should’st long endure,
When thought it self the ruin may procure?
The short-lived tyrant, that usurp’st a sway
O’er woman-kind, though none thy pow’r obey, [20]
Except th’ill-natured, ugly, peevish, proud,
And these indeed, thy praises sing aloud:
But what’s the reason they obey so well?
Because they want the power to rebel:
But I forget, or have my subject lost:
Alas! thy being’s fancy at the most:
Though much desired, ’tis but seldom men
Court the vain blessing from a woman’s pen.