T. R. Smith, comp. Poetica Erotica: Rare and Curious Amatory Verse. 1921–22.
Ignoto
By Christopher Marlowe (1564–1593)| I LOVE thee not for sacred chastity. | |
| Who loves for that? nor for thy sprightly wit: | |
| I love thee not for thy sweet modesty, | |
| Which makes thee in perfection’s throne to sit. | |
| I love thee not for thy enchanting eye, | 5 |
| Thy beauty, ravishing perfection: | |
| I love thee not for unchaste luxury, | |
| Nor for thy body’s fair proportion. | |
| I love thee not for that my soul doth dance, | |
| And leap with pleasure when those lips of thine, | 10 |
| Give musical and graceful utterance, | |
| To some (by thee made happy) poet’s line. | |
| I love thee not for voice or slender small, | |
| But wilt thou know wherefore? Fair sweet, for all. | |
| ’Faith wench! I cannot court thy sprightly eyes, | 15 |
| With the base viol placed between my thighs: | |
| I cannot lisp, nor to some fiddle sing, | |
| Nor run upon a high stretched minikin. | |
| I cannot whine in puling elegies. | |
| Entombing Cupid with sad obsequies: | 20 |
| I am not fashioned for these amorous times, | |
| To court thy beauty with lascivious rhymes: | |
| I cannot dally, caper, dance and sing, | |
| Oiling my saint with supple sonneting: | |
| I cannot cross my arms, or sigh “Ah me,” | 25 |
| “Ah me forlorn!” egregious foppery! | |
| I cannot buss thy fill, play with thy hair, | |
| Swearing by Jove, “Thou art most debonnaire!” | |
| Not I, by cock! but I shall tell thee roundly, | |
| Hark in thine ear, zounds I can (——) thee soundly. | 30 |
| Sweet wench, I love thee; yet I will not sue, | |
| Or show my love as musky courtiers do; | |
| I’ll not carouse a health to honour thee, | |
| In this same bezzling drunken courtesy: | |
| And when all’s quaffed, eat up my bousinglass, | 35 |
| In glory that I am thy servile ass. | |
| Nor will I wear a rotten Bourbon lock, | |
| As some sworn peasant to a female mock. | |
| Well-featured lass, thou know’st I love thee dear, | |
| Yet for thy sake I will not bore mine ear, | 40 |
| To hang thy dirty silken shoe-tires there: | |
| Not for thy love will I once gnash a brick, | |
| Or some pied colours in my bonnet stick. | |
| But by the chaps of hell, to do thee good, | |
| I’ll freely spend my thrice decocted blood. | 45 |