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Home  »  The Book of Elizabethan Verse  »  Anonymous

William Stanley Braithwaite, ed. The Book of Elizabethan Verse. 1907.

Since First I Saw Your Face

Anonymous

SINCE first I saw your face I resolved to honour and renown ye;

If now I am disdainèd I wish my heart had never known ye.

What? I that loved and you that liked, shall we begin to wrangle?

No, no, no, my heart is fast, and cannot disentangle.

If I admire or praise you too much, that fault you may forgive me;

Or if my hands had strayed but a touch, then justly might you leave me.

I asked you leave, you bade me love; is’t now a time to chide me?

No, no, no, I’ll love you still what fortune e’er betide me.

The sun, whose beams most glorious are, rejecteth no beholder,

And your sweet beauty past compare made my poor eyes the bolder:

Where beauty moves and wit delights and signs of kindness bind me,

There, O there! where’er I go I’ll leave my heart behind me!