Love
If I urge my kind desires
From Lyrics from the Song-Books of the Elizabethan Age, ed. A. H. Bullen (London: Nimmo, 1891)
If I urge my kind desires,
She, unkind, doth them reject,
Women's hearts are painted fires,
To deceive them that affect.
I alone love's fires include:
She alone doth them delude.
She hath often vowed her love:
But alas no fruit I find.
That her fires are false I prove
Yet, in her, no fault I find.
I was thus unhappy born,
And ordained to be her scorn.
Yet if human care or pain,
May the heavenly order change;
She will hate her own disdain,
And repent she was so strange:
For a truer heart than I,
Never lived, nor loved to die.
Codex Note
From CAMPION and ROSSETER's Book of Airs, 1601.
Cite this poem
MLA
Anonymous (Elizabethan songs). “If I urge my kind desires.” Poetry Codex, poetrycodex.com/poem/anonymous-elizabethan-songs/58/.
Chicago
Anonymous (Elizabethan songs). “If I urge my kind desires.” Poetry Codex. https://poetrycodex.com/poem/anonymous-elizabethan-songs/58/.
Read this poem with the Codex →