Phyllis

Phyllis is my only joy,
Faithless as the winds or seas;
Sometimes coming, sometimes coy,
Yet she never fails to please;
If with a frown
I am cast down,
Phyllis smiling,
And beguiling,
Makes me happier than before.
Though, alas! too late I find
Nothing can her fancy fix,
Yet the moment she is kind
I forgive her all her tricks;
Which, though I see,
I can't get free;
She deceiving,
I believing;
What need lovers wish for more?

Sir Charles Sedley
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I am yet to see a poem about love with a happy ending. Indeed, even when i attempt to write a poem, it always turns out to be sadly ended. Yet, why we all crave for it is something i can only explain in biological and evolutionary terms. And sometimes that whole rationalization makes me feel better about my own vulnerability. We're all bad dancers looking to blame the floor. I blame evolution. Evolution that doesn't really care, evolution that, at the moment, is making me bend to its every whim and fancy - a whim and fancy that it is unaware of.

Who do i pity more ? Phyllis or sir charles sedley? I think i'd have to pity phyllis. For sir charles sedley knows that phyllis will come and then she will go, and he will be left waiting again. He has long since accepted that it will not take much for him to forgive her her errors. The moment she is kind, the moment she smiles, the moment, i suppose, she flirts, he's lost his will to take the high road, and he succumbs. But he's done this about a million times, i am guessing. Its become a pattern and he's found ways to deal with her absence, while waiting for her fleeting presence. Its phyllis i pity, who's taken sir charles for granted. Its phyllis i pity, who's going to be left high and dry if sir charles for once decides that he's had enough. While phyllis is sir charles's wind, sir charles is phyllis's rock. And while all of us are never astonished when the wind moves as though it never existed, we'll have a pretty hard time dealing with a rock disappearing.

But its the perfect arrangement isn't it ?
She deceiving,
I believing.
What need lovers wish for more ?

:)