William Stanley Braithwaite, ed. The Book of Elizabethan Verse. 1907. “Beware of Love” Anonymous
THUS 1 saith my Chloris bright, When we of love sit down and talk together:— ‘Beware of Love, dear; Love is a walking sprite, And Love is this and that, And, O, I know not what, 5 And comes and goes again I wot not whither.’ No, no,—these are but bugs to breed amazing, For in her eyes I saw his torchlight blazing.
Note 1. Madrigals, 1598. It is a rendering of an Italian madrigal of Guarini, says Bullen; of Luca Marenzio, says Quiller-Couch. In Musica Transalpina; The Second Book of Madrigals, 1597, is another version which reads: So saith my fair and beautiful Lycoris, When now and then she talketh With me of love: “Love is a spirit that walketh, That soars and flies, And none alive can hold him, Nor touch him, nor behold him.” Yet when her eye she turneth, I spy where he sojourneth: In her eyes there he flies, But none can catch him Till from her lips he fetch him.
