| | | A Thousand Martyrs I Have Made
by Aphra Behn A thousand martyrs I have made,
All sacrific'd to my desire;
A thousand beauties have betray'd,
That languish in resistless fire.
The untam'd heart to hand I brought,
And fixed the wild and wandering thought.
I never vow'd nor sigh'd in vain
But both, tho' false, were well receiv'd.
The fair are pleas'd to give us pain,
And what they wish is soon believ'd.
And tho' I talk'd of wounds and smart,
Love's pleasures only touched my heart.
Alone the glory and the spoil
I always laughing bore away;
The triumphs, without pain or toil,
Without the hell, the heav'n of joy.
And while I thus at random rove
Despis'd the fools that whine for love. |
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| Today's poem is in the public domain. |
| About this poem: Virginia Woolf writes of Aphra Behn, in A Room of One's Own, that: "She made, by working very hard, enough to live on. The importance of that fact outweighs anything that she actually wrote, even the splendid 'A Thousand Martyrs I have made,' or 'Love in Fantastic Triumph sat,' for here begins the freedom of the mind or rather the possibility that in the course of time the mind will be free to write what it likes." d |
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Born on December 14, 1640, Aphra Behn was one of the first professional female writers and the author of Oroonoko and The Rover. She died on April 16, 1689. |
| Related Poems by Harryette Mullen by Sappho by Hafiz |
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