Classic Poem

Who with a bridle strives to curb the waves?
Or in a cypresse chest locks flaming fires?
So when love angred in thy bosome raves,
And grief with love a double flame inspires,
By silence thou mayst adde, but never lesse it:
The way is by expressing to represse it.

Who then will blame affection not respected,
To vent in grief the grief that so torments him?
Passion will speak in passion, if neglected:
Love that so soon will chide, as soon repents him;
And therefore boyish Love's too like a boy,
With a toy pleas'd, displeased with a toy.

Have you not seen, when you have chid or fought,
That lively picture of your lovely beauty,
Your pretty childe, at first to lowre or pout,
But soon again reclaim'd to love and duty;
Forgets the rod, and all her anger ends,
Playes on your lap, or on your neck depends:

Too like that pretty childe is childish Love ,
That when in anger he is wrong'd, or beat,
Will rave and chide, and every passion prove,
But soon to smiles and fawns turns all his heat,
And prayes, and swears he never more will do it;
Such one is Love : alas that women know it!

But if so just excuse will not content ye,
But still you blame the words of angry Love ;
Here I recant, and of those words repent me:
In signe hereof I offer now to prove,
That changing womens love is constant ever,
And men, though ever firm, are constant never.

For men that to one fair their passions binde,
Must ever change, as do those changing fairs;
So as she alters, alters still their minde,
And with their fading Loves their love impairs:
Therefore still moving, as the fair they loved,
Most do they move, by being most unmoved.

But women, when their lovers change their graces,
What first in them they lov'd, love now in others,
Affecting still the same in divers places;
So never change their love, but change their lovers:
Therefore their minde is firm and constant prov'd,
Seeing they ever love what first they lov'd.

Their love ty'd to some vertue, cannot stray,
Shifting the outside oft, the inside never:
But men (when now their Loves dissolv'd to clay
Indeed are nothing) still in love persever:
How then can such fond men be constant made,
That nothing love, or but a (nothing) shade?

What fool commends a stone for never moving?
Or blames the speedie heav'ns for ever ranging?
Cease then, fond men, to blaze your constant loving;
Love's firie, winged, light, and therefore changing:
Fond man, that thinks such fire and aire to fetter!
All change; men for the worse, women for better.