| William Stanley Braithwaite, ed. The Book of Elizabethan Verse. 1907. | | | | Since First I Saw Your Face | | Anonymous |
| | | SINCE 1 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. | |
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| If I admire or praise you too much, that fault you may forgive me; | 5 |
| 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. | |
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| The sun, whose beams most glorious are, rejecteth no beholder, | |
| And your sweet beauty past compare made my poor eyes the bolder: | 10 |
| 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! | |
| | | Note 1. From Thomas Ford’s Music of Sundry Kinds, 1607. [back] | | |
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