Poetical Works of Edmund Waller and Sir John Denham

On the Discovery of a Lady’s Painting

1 Pygmalion’s fate reversed is mine;1
  His marble love took flesh and blood;
  All that I worshipp’d as divine,
  That beauty! now ’tis understood,
  Appears to have no more of life
  Than that whereof he framed his wife.

2 As women yet, who apprehend
  Some sudden cause of causeless fear,
  Although that seeming cause take end,
  And they behold no danger near,
  A shaking through their limbs they find,
  Like leaves saluted by the wind:

3 So though the beauty do appear
  No beauty, which amazed me so;
  Yet from my breast I cannot tear
  The passion which from thence did grow;
  Nor yet out of my fancy raze
  The print of that supposèd face.

4 A real beauty, though too near,
  The fond Narcissus did admire:
  I dote on that which is nowhere;
  The sign of beauty feeds my fire.
  No mortal flame was e’er so cruel
  As this, which thus survives the fuel!

Notes

1 ‘Mine’: Ovid, Met. x.