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Home  »  The Book of Elizabethan Verse  »  Thomas Campion (1567–1620)

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

Love Me or Not

Thomas Campion (1567–1620)

LOVE me or not, love her I must or die;

Leave me or not, follow her needs must I.

O that her grace would my wished comforts give!

How rich in her, how happy should I live!

All my desire, all my delight should be

Her to enjoy, her to unite to me;

Envy should cease, her would I love alone:

Who loves by looks is seldom true to one.

Could I enchant, and that it lawful were,

Her would I charm softly that none should hear;

But love enforced rarely yields firm content:

So would I love that neither should repent.