| |
| SINCE love is such as that ye wot | |
| Cannot always be wisely used; | |
| I say therefore then blame me not, | |
| Though I therein have been abused. | |
| For as with cause I am accused, | 5 |
| Guilty I grant such was my lot; | |
| And though it cannot be excused, | |
| Yet let such folly be forgot. | |
| For in my years of reckless youth | |
| Methought the power of love so great; | 10 |
| That to his laws I bound my truth, | |
| And to my will there was no let. | |
| Me list no more so far to fet; | |
| Such fruit! lo! as of love ensu’th; | |
| The gain was small that was to get, | 15 |
| And of the loss the less the ruth. | |
| And few there is but first or last, | |
| A time in love once shall they have; | |
| And glad I am my time is past, | |
| Henceforth my freedom to withsave. | 20 |
| Now in my heart there shall I grave | |
| The granted grace that now I taste; | |
| Thanked be fortune that me gave | |
| So fair a gift, so sure and fast. | |
| Now such as have me seen ere this, | 25 |
| When youth in me set forth his kind; | |
| And folly framed my thought amiss, | |
| The fault whereof now well I find; | |
| Lo! since that so it is assign’d, | |
| That unto each a time there is, | 30 |
| Then blame the lot that led my mind, | |
| Some time to live in love’s bliss. | |
| But from henceforth I do protest, | |
| By proof of that that I have past, | |
| Shall never cease within my breast | 35 |
| The power of Love so late outcast: | |
| The knot thereof is knit full fast, | |
| And I thereto so sure profess’d | |
| For evermore with me to last | |
| The power wherein I am possess’d. | 40 |
| |
