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Home  »  The Book of Elizabethan Verse  »  John Lyly (1555?–1606)

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

Love’s College

John Lyly (1555?–1606)

O CUPID! monarch over kings,

Wherefore hast thou feet and wings?

It is to show how swift thou art

When thou wound’st a tender heart!

Thy wings being clipt, and feet held still,

Thy bow so many could not kill.

It is all one in Venus’ wanton school,

Who highest sits, the wise man or the fool.

Fools in love’s college

Have far more knowledge

To read a woman over

Than a neat prating lover:

Nay, ’tis confest

That fools please women best.