Beauty in an AP test.

So... yesterday I took my first of four AP exams (English Lit) and I was really anxious because the whole year we kept doing practice multiple choice and consistently would not do well so I put a lot of effort into practicing it. The essays I wasn't so worried about.

Anyway, the last poem on the test had to have been my favorite. I didn't really fully understand it until I got through the multiple choice, but I think it's a lovely declaration of two people growing apart and a changing love. Interestingly enough, all the girls loved it and all the guys hated it.

To an Inconstant One

I loved thee once; I'll love no more--
Thine be the grief as is the blame;
Thou art not what thou wast before,
What reason I should be the same?
He that can love unloved again,
Hath better store of love than brain:
God send me love my debts to pay,
While unthrifts fool their love away!

Nothing could have my love o'erthrown
If thou hadst still continued mine;
Yea, if thou hadst remain'd thy own,
I might perchance have yet been thine.
But thou thy freedom didst recall
That it thou might elsewhere enthral:
And then how could I but disdain
A captive's captive to remain?

When new desires had conquer'd thee
And changed the object of thy will,
It had been lethargy in me,
Not constancy, to love thee still.
Yea, it had been a sin to go
And prostitute affection so:
Since we are taught no prayers to say
To such as must to others pray.

Yet do thou glory in thy choice--
Thy choice of his good fortune boast;
I'll neither grieve nor yet rejoice
To see him gain what I have lost:
The height of my disdain shall be
To laugh at him, to blush for thee;
To love thee still, but go no more
A-begging at a beggar's door.

-Sir Robert Ayton