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To The Little Spinners.

By Robert Herrick

Topics: classic

Ye pretty housewives, would ye know     The work that I would put ye to?     This, this it should be: for to spin     A lawn for me, so fine and thin     As it might serve me for my skin.     For cruel Love has me so whipp'd     That of my skin I all am stripp'd:     And shall despair that any art     Can ease the rawness or the smart,     Unless you skin again each part.     Which mercy if you will but do,     I call all maids to witness to     What here I promise: that no broom     Shall now or ever after come     To wrong a spinner or her loom.

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"Ye pretty housewives, would ye know..."

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Author:Robert Herrick

"Ye pretty housewives, would ye know..." by Robert Herrick

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Robert Herrick

About Robert Herrick

Robert Herrick (1591–1674) was an English Cavalier poet whose "Hesperides" (1648) contains over 1,200 poems. His carpe diem verse "To the Virgins, to Make Much of Time" ("Gather ye rosebuds while ye may") and lyric poems celebrate love, beauty, and the passing of time.

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