| Seccombe and Arber, comps. Elizabethan Sonnets. 1904. | | | | Laura—Part III. | | XXXI. “My Mistress seems but brown,” say you to me | | Robert Tofte (1561–1620) |
| | | “MY Mistress seems but brown,” say you to me. | |
| ’Tis very true, and I confess the same: | |
| Yet love I her although that brown She be; | |
| Because to please me, She is glad and fain. | |
| I lovèd one most beautiful before; | 5 |
| Whom now, as death, I deadly do abhor. | |
| Because to scorn my service her I found; | |
| I gave her o’er, and chose to me this same. | |
| Nor to be faithful, think I, I am bound | |
| To one, in whom no kindness doth remain. | 10 |
| This is the cause, for brown and pitiful; | |
| I left a fair, but yet a faithless, Trull. | | | | |
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