Classic Poem

For a shape, and a bloom, and an air, and a mien,
Myrtilla was brightest of all the gay green;
But artfully wild, and affectedly coy,
Those her beauties invited, her pride would destroy.

By the flocks as she stray'd, with the nymphs of the vale,
Not a shepherd but woo'd her to hear his soft tale;
Though fatal the passion, she laugh'd at the swain,
And return'd with neglect what she heard with disdain.

But beauty has wings, and too hastily flies,
And love, unrewarded, soon sickens and dies;
The nymph, cur'd by time of her folly and pride,
Now sighs in her turn for the bliss she denied.

No longer she frolics it wide o'er the plain,
To kill with her coyness the languishing swain;
So humbled her pride is, so soften'd her mind,
That, though courted by none, she to all would be kind.