1. The arrow lodged in the quiver will decay
No charm can guard you from time’s slow decay

2. My chastity you recall but now’s no time
For pardoning you nor guarding my chastity

3. Lampoons flash like lightning, cleaving the gloom
Your trenches cringe before their swift doom

4. I strew embers to scorch your naked feet
While you the shod one’s harm regret too late

5. How can you merit my grace and pardon
If you don’t scrub your confession clean of lies

6. The butcher provoked me then turned to flee
Exposing himself in his haste to escape

7. He patched his verse with the eyes of my verse
Mingling pure honey with bitter syrup

8. My poems have suffered from your dull offerings
As rhymes suffered from your jarring singings

9. Once smooth, her path is rocky where you walk
Once bright, her roses darkened by your talk

10. You destroyed her, most cultured of all ladies
With ignorance deeper than any learning

11. She has the finest conversational grace
Whether heard aloud or read on paper’s face

12. Beauty and spirit in blissful union
Of gentle temper and gentle communion

13. Never lacking some gadfly to sting her
And ruffle the calm of her gentle nature

14. You treat the art of poetry like some whim
Stumbling through effort and ungainly attempts

15. The poems cry out against your wrongs
Is there one strong enough to right these wrongs

16. You race but her lead was faster at the start You lag while her pace flowed strong and smart
You boast your fame and glory loudly tolls

17. Yet the flash of the moment is blind to your goals
Our disparity cannot be hidden from sight

18. As the stellar from beggars in fortune’s light
Nobility comes from the scorn of villains

19. And crown jewel’s glitter from tinsel’s dullness
You’ve been struck by floods of venomous lampoons

20. Capable of drowning the driest buffoons
So constricted by you, this once wide, free space

21. When I unleashed on you my cloak’s embrace

22. I never improperly began this affair
I answer abuse for abuse, and swear for swear

23. I’ll heal poetry of you in artful verse
Laboring long as for a jewel or hearse

24. I’ll push you away, however hard I strain
So stop behind me, refusing to remain