This day (the year I dare not tell)

Apollo play’d the midwife's part;

Into the world Corinna fell,

And he endued her with his art.

But Cupid with a Satyr comes;

Both softly to the cradle creep;

Both stroke her hands, and rub her gums,

While the poor child lay fast asleep.

Then Cupid thus: ‘This little maid

Of love shall always speak and write’;

‘And I pronounce,’ the Satyr said,

‘The world shall feel her scratch and bite.’

Her talent she display’d betimes;

For in a few revolving moons,

She seem’d to laugh and squall in rhymes,

And all her gestures were lampoons.

At six years old, the subtle jade

Stole to the pantry-door, and found

The butler with my lady's maid:

And you may swear the tale went round.

She made a song, how little miss

Was kiss’d and slobber’d by a lad:

And how, when master went to p—,

Miss came, and peep’d at all he had.

At twelve, a wit and a coquette;

Marries for love, half whore, half wife;

Cuckolds, elopes, and runs in debt;

Turns authoress, and is Curll's for life.

Her common-place book all gallant is,

Of scandal now a cornucopia;

She pours it out in Atalantis

Or memoirs of the New Utopia.

—Jonathan Swift