What Needeth these Threat'ning Words
What Needeth these Threat'ning Words
Original Text
British Library Egerton MS. 2711, fol. 33; cf. Richard Harrier, Canon (1975): 141.
2All this cannot make me restore my prey.
3To rob your good, iwis, is not my mind,
4Nor causeless your fair hand did I display.
6That may both hear what you and I can say:
7She took from me an heart, and I a glove from her.
8Let us see now if th'one be worth th'other.
Notes
1] The source of the poem is Serafino, Opere (1516), fol. 170:
À che minacci, à che tanta ira e orgoglio,Back to Line
Per questo non farai chel furto renda.
Non senza causa la tua man dispoglio
Rapir quel daltri non fú mai mia menda.
Famme citar dauanti amor chio uoglio,
Che la Ragion de luno & laltro intenda.
Lei il cor mi tolse, & io gli hó tolto un guanto
Vorró saper da te se un cor ual tanto.
5] meet: Tottel corrects the rhyme to "find". Back to Line
Publication Start Year
1557
RPO poem Editors
Ian Lancashire
RPO Edition
RPO 1997.
Rhyme