Classic Poem

What fury has provoked thy wit to dare,
With Diomede, to wound the Queen of Love?
Thy mistress' envy, or thine own despair?
Not the just Pallas in thy breast did move
So blind a rage, with such a different fate;
He honour won where thou hast purchased hate.

She gave assistance to his Trojan foe;
Thou, that without a rival thou mayst love,
Dost to the beauty of this lady owe,
While after her the gazing world does move.
Canst thou not be content to love alone?
Or is thy mistress not content with one?

Though Ceres' child could not avoid the rape
Of the grim god that hurried her to hell,
Yet there her beauty did from slander 'scape,
When thou art there, she shall not speed so well:
The spiteful owl, whose tale detains her there,
Is not so blind to say she is not fair.

Hast thou not read of Fairy Arthur's shield,
Which, but disclosed, amazed the weaker eyes
Of proudest foes, and won the doubtful field?
So shall thy rebel wit become her prize.
Should thy iambics swell into a book,
All were confuted with one radiant look.

Heaven he obliged that placed her in the skies;
Rewarding Phaebus, for inspiring so
His noble brain, by likening to those eyes
His joyful beams; but Phaebus is thy foe,
And neither aids thy fancy nor thy sight,
So ill thou rhym'st against so fair a light.