| William Stanley Braithwaite, ed. The Book of Elizabethan Verse. 1907. | | | | Menaphon’s Song | | By Robert Greene (1558–1592) |
| | | SOME say Love, | |
| Foolish Love, | |
| Doth rule and govern all the gods: | |
| I say Love, | |
| Inconstant Love, | 5 |
| Sets men’s senses far at odds. | |
| Some swear Love, | |
| Smooth-faced Love, | |
| Is sweetest sweet that men can have; | |
| I say Love, | 10 |
| Sower Love, | |
| Makes virtue yield as beauty’s slave. | |
| A bitter sweet, a folly worst of all, | |
| That forceth wisdom to be folly’s thrall. | |
| |
| Love is sweet.— | 15 |
| Wherein sweet? | |
| In fading pleasures that do pain. | |
| Beauty sweet: | |
| Is that sweet | |
| That yieldeth sorrow for a gain? | 20 |
| If Love’s sweet, | |
| Herein sweet, | |
| That minute’s joys are monthly woes: | |
| ’Tis not sweet, | |
| That is sweet | 25 |
| Nowhere but where repentance grows. | |
| Then love who list, if beauty be so sower; | |
| Labour for me, Love rest in prince’s bower. | | | | |
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