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As you came
from the holy land
Of Walsinghame,
Met you not
with my true love
By the way as you came?
How
shall I know your true love,
That have met many 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 a 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 all alone,
All alone,
as unknown,
Who sometimes 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 true love is a durable fire
In the mind ever
burning;
Never sick, never old, never dead,
From
itself never turning.
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