It is not four years ago,
I offered forty crowns
To lie with her a night or so:
She answered me in frowns.
Not two years since, she meeting me
Did whisper in my ear,
That she would at my service be,
If I contented were.
I told her I was cold as snow,
And had no great desire;
But should be well content to go
To twenty, but no higher.
Some three months since or thereabout,
She that so coy had been,
Bethought herself and found me out,
And was content to sin.
I smiled at that, and told her I
Did think it something late,
And that I’d not repentance buy
At above half the rate.
This present morning early she
Forsooth came to my bed,
And gratis there she offered me
Her high-prized maidenhead.
I told her that I thought it then
Far dearer than I did,
When I at first the forty crowns
For one night’s lodging bid.
It is not four years ago is a poem by John Suckling reminiscent of a scene in the 1969 film Coming Apart. The scene where a young pregnant mother visits the protagonist psychiatrist and offers herself. She asks “Is it worth fifty dollars to you?” And Rip Torn answers: “Baby, you’re worth a million dollars to me”. They then proceed without monetary exchange. Loved the film. The poem came by way of the Kronhausens book Pornography and the law: The psychology of erotic realism and pornography.