Yet be just and constant still, Love may beget a wonder,
Not unlike a summer’s frost or winter’s fatal thunder:
He that holds his sweetheart true unto his day of dying,
Lives, of all that ever breathed, most worthy the envying.
From Giles Farnaby’s Canzonets, 1598.
Simkin said that Sis was fair,
When they came home Sis floted cream
And poured it through a strainer,
But sware that Simkin should have none
Because he did disdain her.
From Thomas Ford’s Music Of Sundry Kinds, 1607.
Since first I saw your face I resolved to honour and renown ye,
If I admire or praise you too much, that fault you may forgive me
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.
The sun whose beams most glorious are, rejecteth no beholder,
And your sweet beauty past compare made my poor eyes the bolder,
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.
From Thomas Morley’s First Book of Ballets, 1595.
Sing we and chant it