When lovely woman stoops to folly
Oliver Goldsmith · 1770
Public domain
From The Golden Treasury, selected by Francis Turner Palgrave. Oliver Goldsmith. The text is free of copyright in the United States. This copy is the poem, without the Project Gutenberg header.
When lovely woman stoops to folly
And finds too late that men betray,--
What charm can soothe her melancholy,
What art can wash her guilt away?
The only art her guilt to cover,
To hide her shame from every eye,
To give repentance to her lover
And wring his bosom, is--to die.