Oh, cruel time!

  Nature, that washed her hands in milk, 

  And had forgot to dry them, 

  Instead of earth took snow and silk, 

  At love’s request to try them, 

  If she a mistress could compose 

  To please love’s fancy out of those. 

  Her eyes he would should be of light, 

  A violet breath, and lips of jelly; 

  Her hair not black, nor overbright, 

  And of the softest down her belly; 

  As for her inside he’d have it 

  Only of wantonness and wit. 

  At love’s entreaty such a one 

  Nature made, but with her beauty 

  She hath framed a heart of stone; 

  So as love, by ill destiny, 

  Must die for her whom nature gave him, 

  Because her darling would not save him. 

  But time (which nature doth despise, 

  And rudely gives her love the lie, 

  Makes hope a fool, and sorrow wise) 

  His hands do neither wash nor dry; 

  But being made of steel and rust, 

  Turns snow and silk and milk to dust. 

  The light, the belly, lips, and breath, 

  He dims, discolours, and destroys; 

  With those he feeds but fills not death, 

  Which sometimes were the food of joys. 

  Yea, time doth dull each lively wit, 

  And dries all wantonness with it. 

  Oh, cruel time! which takes in trust 

  Our youth, our joys, and all we have, 

  And pays us but with age and dust; 

  Who in the dark and silent grave 

  When we have wandered all our ways 

Shuts up the story of our days. 

                  - Sir Walter Ralegh

Met you not with my true love?

‘As you came from the holy land
Of Walsingham,
Met you not with my true love
By the way as you came?’

‘How shall I know your true love,
That have met many a one,
As I went to the holy land,
That have come, that have gone?’

‘She is neither white nor brown,
But as the heavens fair;
There is none hath a form so divine
In the earth or the air.’

‘Such an one did I meet, good sir,
Such an angelic face,
Who like a queen, like a nymph, did appear
By her gait, by her grace.’

‘She hath left me here alone,
All alone, as unknown,
Who sometime did me lead with herself,
And me loved as her own.’

‘What’s the cause that she leaves you alone,
And a new way doth take,
Who loved you once as her own,
And her joy did you make?’

‘I have loved her all my youth,
But now old, as you see,
Love likes not the falling fruit
From the withered tree.

‘Know that Love is a careless child,
And forgets promise past,
He is blind, he is deaf when he list,
And in faith never fast.

‘His desire is a dureless content
And a trustless joy;
He is won with a world of despair
And is lost with a toy.’

‘Of womenkind such indeed is the love
Or the word love abused,
Under which many childish desires
And conceits are excused.

‘But love is a durable fire,
In the mind ever burning;
Never sick, never old, never dead,
From itself never turning.’

                     - Sir Walter Raleigh