Poem by Francis Beaumont

The Author to the Reader

I sing the fortune of a luckless pair,
Whose spotless souls now in one body be;
For beauty still is Prodromus to care,
Crost by the sad stars of nativity:
And of the strange enchantment of a well,
Given by the Gods, my sportive muse doth write,
Which sweet-lipp'd Ovid long ago did tell,
Wherein who bathes, straight turns Hermaphrodite:
 I hope my poem is so lively writ,
 That thou wilt turn half-mad with reading it.

1. Ad Comitissam Rutlandiæ
2. In Laudem Authoris
3. To My Friend Mr. John Fletcher, upon His Faithful Sheperdess
4. To the True Patroness of All Poetry, Calliope
5. Mr. Francis Beaumont's Letter to Ben Jonson

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