Written on a White Fan borrowed from Miss Osborne, afterwards his wife by Francis Atterbury

Flavia the least and slightest toy
Can with resistless art employ;
This fan in meaner hands would prove An engine of small force in love;
Yet she with graceful air and mien,
Not to be told or safely seen,
Directs its wanton motions so That it wounds more than Cupid’s bow;
Gives coolness to the matchless dame,
To every other breast—a flame.

From: Bullen, A. H. (ed.), Musa Proterva: Love-Poems of the Restoration, 1902, Privately Printed, p. 117.
(https://warburg.sas.ac.uk/pdf/emh360b2451554.pdf)

Date: c1690

By: Francis Atterbury (1663-1732)