71. Love not me for comely grace
John Wilbye's Second Set of Madrigals

Numbers from Elizabethan Miscellanies & Song-books by Unnamed or Uncertain Authors. 1609


LOVE not me for comely grace,
For my pleasing eye or face,
Nor for any outward part,
No, nor for a constant heart:
    For these may fail or turn to ill,
      So thou and I shall sever:
Keep, therefore, a true woman's eye,
And love me still but know not why--
    So hast thou the same reason still
      To doat upon me ever!

The Oxford Book of English Verse, HTML edition