lovers on that pretty metempsychosis which shall make them slippers, or
fans, or girdles, like Waller's, and like that which bound "the dainty,
dainty waist" of the Miller's Daughter.

"Ring that shalt bind the finger fair
Of my sweet maid, thou art not rare;
Thou hast not any price above
The token of her poet's love;
Her finger may'st thou mate as she
Is mated every wise with me!"

And the poet goes on, as poets will, to wish he were this favoured, this
fortunate jewel:

"In vain I wish! So, ring, depart,
And say 'with me thou hast his heart'!"

Once more Ovid's verses on his catholic affection for all ladies, the
brown and the blonde, the short and the tall, may have suggested Cowley's
humorous confession, "The Chronicle":

"Margarita first possessed,
If I remember well, my breast,
Margarita, first of all;"

and then follows a list as long as Leporello's.

What disqualifies Ovid as a writer of _vers de societe_ is not so much
his lack of "decorum" as the monotonous singsong of his eternal elegiacs.
The lightest of light things, the poet of society, should possess more