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Classic and Contemporary Poetry
LUTEA ALLISON, by JOHN SUCKLING Poet's Biography
First Line: Though you diana-like have liv'd still chaste
Last Line: The world would have its end before its time.
First Line: Though you diana-like have liv'd still chaste
Last Line: The world would have its end before its time.
THOUGH you Diana-like have liv'd still chaste,
Yet must you not, fair, die a maid at last:
The roses on your cheeks were never made
To bless the eye alone, and so to fade;
Nor had the cherries on your lips their being
To please no other sense than that of seeing:
You were not made to look on, though that be
A bliss too great for poor mortality:
In that alone those rarer parts you have,
To better uses sure wise Nature gave
Than that you put them to; to love, to wed,
For Hymen's rites and for the marriage-bed
You were ordain'd, and not to lie alone;
One is no number, till that two be one.
To keep a maidenhead but till fifteen
Is worse than murder, and a greater sin
Than to have lost it in the lawful sheets
With one that should want skill to reap those sweets:
But not to lose 't at all---by Venus, this,
And by her son, inexpiable is;
And should each female guilty be o' th' crime,
The world would have its end before its time.
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