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Home  »  Poetica Erotica  »  Proferred Love Rejected

T. R. Smith, comp. Poetica Erotica: Rare and Curious Amatory Verse. 1921–22.

Proferred Love Rejected

By Sir John Suckling (1609–1642)
 
(From Poems, 1638)

IT is not four years ago,
  I offered forty crowns
To lie with her a night or so:
  She answer’d me in frowns.
 
Not two years since, she meeting me        5
  Did whisper in my ear,
That she would at my service be,
  If I contented were.
 
I told her I was cold as snow,
  And had no great desire;        10
But should be well content to go
  To twenty, but no higher.
 
Some three months since or thereabout,
  She that so coy had been,
Bethought herself and found me out,        15
  And was content to sin.
 
I smiled at that, and told her I
  Did think it something late,
And that I’d not repentance buy
  At above half the rate.        20
 
This present morning early she
  Forsooth came to my bed,
And gratis there she offered me
  Her high-prized maidenhead.
 
I told her that I thought it then        25
  Far dearer than I did,
When I at first the forty crowns
  For one night’s lodging bid.