Finch defends her daring to practise the male profession of poetry using heroic couplets and subversive jokes

The Apology

’Tis true, I write; and tell me by what rule
I am alone forbid to play the fool,
To follow through the groves a wandering muse
And feigned ideas for my pleasures choose?
Why should it in my pen be held a fault,
Whilst Myra paints her face, to paint a thought?
Whilst Lamia to the manly bumper flies,
And borrowed spirits sparkle in her eyes,
Why should it be in me a thing so vain
To heat with poetry my colder brain?

Finch defends her daring to practise the male profession of poetry using heroic couplets and subversive jokes

The Apology

’Tis true, I write; and tell me by what rule
I am alone forbid to play the fool,
To follow through the groves a wandering muse
And feigned ideas for my pleasures choose?
Why should it in my pen be held a fault,
Whilst Myra paints her face, to paint a thought?
Whilst Lamia to the manly bumper flies,
And borrowed spirits sparkle in her eyes,
Why should it be in me a thing so vain
To heat with poetry my colder brain?

Finch defends her daring to practise the male profession of poetry using heroic couplets and subversive jokes

The Apology

’Tis true, I write; and tell me by what rule
I am alone forbid to play the fool,
To follow through the groves a wandering muse
And feigned ideas for my pleasures choose?
Why should it in my pen be held a fault,
Whilst Myra paints her face, to paint a thought?
Whilst Lamia to the manly bumper flies,
And borrowed spirits sparkle in her eyes,
Why should it be in me a thing so vain
To heat with poetry my colder brain?