University of Virginia Library

Search this document 
Salamacis and Hermaphroditvs

[by Francis Beaumont]
 

expand section



The Author to the Reader.

I sing the fortunes of a lucklesse payre,
Whose spotlesse soules now in one body be:
For beauty still is Prodromus to care,
Crost by the sad starres of natiuitie;
And of the strange inchauntment of a well
Gi'n by the gods my sportiue Muse doth write,
Which sweet-lipt Ouid long agoe did tell,
Wherein who bathes, strait turnes Hermaphrodite.
I hope my Poeme is so liuely writ,
That thou wilt turne halfe-mayd with reading it.