To My Rival

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.