To My Rival
04/28/2026 14:58h
Since you dare Brave me, with a Rivals Name,
You shall prevail, and I will quite my Claime:
For know, proud Maid, I Scorn to call him mine,
Whom thou durst ever hope to have made thine:
Yet I confess, I lov’d him once so well,
His presence was my Heav’n, his absence Hell:
With gen’rous excellence I fill’d his Brest,
And in sweet Beauteous Forms his Person drest;
For him I did heaven, and its Pow’r despise,
And onely lived by th’Influence of his Eyes:
I fear’d not Rivals, for I thought that he
That was possess’d of such a Prize as me,
All meaner Objects wou’d Contemn, and Slight,
Nor let an abject thing Usurpe my Right:
But when I heard he was so wretched Base
To pay devotion to thy wrinkled Face
I Banish’t him my sight, and told the Slave,
He had not Worth, but what my Fancy gave:
’Twas I that rais’d him to this Glorious State,
And can as easily Annihilate:
But let him live, Branded with Guilt and Shame,
And Shrink into the Shade from whence he came;
His Punishment shall be, the Loss of Me,
And be Augumented, by his gaining Thee.