Love

Does It Become a Girl So Wise

by Walter Savage Landor 1775–1864

From Works and Life, ed. Forster, vol. VIII (1876)

Love

Does it become a girl so wise,
So exquisite in harmonies,
To ask me when do I intend
To write a sonnet? What? my friend!
A sonnet? Never. Rhyme o'erflows
Italian, which hath scarcely prose;
And I have larded full three-score
With sorte, morte, cuor, amor.
But why should we, altho' we have
Enough for all things, gay or grave,
Say, on your conscience, why should we
Who draw deep scans along the sea,
Cut them in pieces to beset
The shallows with a cabbage-net?
Now if you ever ask again
A thing so troublesome and vain,
By all your charms! before the morn,
To show my anger and my scorn,
First I will write your name a-top,
Then from this very ink shall drop
A score of sonnets; every one
Shall call you star, or moon, or sun,
Till, swallowing such warm-water verse,
Even sonnet-sippers sicken worse.

MLA

Landor, Walter Savage. “Does It Become a Girl So Wise.” Poetry Codex, poetrycodex.com/poem/landor/506/.

Chicago

Landor, Walter Savage. “Does It Become a Girl So Wise.” Poetry Codex. https://poetrycodex.com/poem/landor/506/.

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