"I loved her all my youth,25
But now am old, as you see;
Love liketh not the fallen fruit,
Nor the withered tree.
"For love is a careless child,
And forgets promise past;30
He is blind, he is deaf, when he list,
And in faith never fast.
"For love is a great delight,
And yet a trustless joy;
He is won with a word of despair,35
And is lost with a toy.
"Such is the love of womankind,
Or the word abus'd,
Under which many childish desires
"But love is a durable fire,
In the mind ever burning;
Never sick, never dead, never cold,
From itself never turning."
KING COPHETUA AND THE BEGGAR-MAID.
From Richard Johnson's Crowne-Garland of Goulden Roses, (1612,) as reprinted by the Percy Society, vi. 45. It is there simply entitled A Song of a Beggar and a King. Given in Percy's Reliques, i. 202, "corrected by another copy."