A Pox of the Statesman that’s witty:
Beauty is dead and rotten.

Children of wealth in warm nurseries —
Death struck when they were most confiding.

Events like the weeping of the girl in the classroom:
Fair lovely Maid, or if that Title be

Gay little Girl-of-the-Diving-Tank.
Hail, happy day, when, smiling like the morn,

I am a union woman.
Later-born and woman-souled I dare not hope

Man pays that debt with new munificence.
Newington Butts were lively (Elephant and Castle meet).

O pregnant womanhood that scarce can drag:
Publication — is the Auction.

Remember still the first, impetuous form:
Save me from such as me assaile.

Teach the kings sonne, who king hym self shall be
Underneath this able hearse.

We are things of dry hours and involuntary plans:
You little know the hearts you advise.

. . . . . .

Centos by Susan Powers Bourne
Drawn from Index of First Lines in
The World Split Open: Four Centuries
of Women Poets in England and America,
1552 -1950, ed. Louise Burkinow, 1974.