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| LADIES, 1 the Beardless Author of this Day | |
| Commends to you the Fortune of his Play. | |
| A Woman Wit has often grac’d the Stage, | |
| But he’s the first Boy-Poet of our Age | |
| Early as is the Year his Fancies blow, | 5 |
| Like young Narcissus peeping through the Snow; | |
| Thus Cowley blossom’d soon, yet Flourish’d long, | |
| This is as forward, and may prove as strong. | |
| Youth with the Fair should always Favour find, | |
| Or we are damn’d Dissemblers of our kind. | 10 |
| What’s all this Love they put into our Parts? | |
| ’Tis but the pit-a-pat of Two Young Hearts. | |
| Shou’d Hag and Gray-beard make such tender moan, | |
| Faith, you’d e’en trust ’em to themselves alone, | |
| And cry, let’s go, here’s nothing to be done. | 15 |
| Since Love’s our Business, as ’tis your Delight, | |
| The Young, who best can practise, best can Write. | |
| What though he be not come to his full Pow’r? | |
| He’s mending and improving every Hour. | |
| You sly She-Jockies of the Box and Pit | 20 |
| Are pleas’d to find a hot unbroken Wit, | |
| By management he may in time be made, | |
| But there’s no hopes of an old batter’d Jade; | |
| Faint and unnerv’d he runs into a Sweat, | |
| And always fails you at the Second Heat. | 25 |
