My hert I gave the not to do it payn

sister projects: Wikidata item.

Witness description: A collection of 123 poems, of which one is copied twice, entered before 1558. Nineteen were added in Elizabethan hands. Twenty-five poems and corrections in three others are in Sir Thomas Wyatt’s hand. One poem and some revisions of Wyatt’s poems are in Nicholas Grimald’s hand from c. 1549. Seventy-three of the entries from before 1558 are signed with “TV,” “VT,” or “Tho,” possibly in Wyatt’s hand. A sixteenth century hand has signed fifteen other poems with “Wyatt.” The MS, without Grimald’s additions, was copied for and partly by Wyatt before 1542 as a collection of Wyatt’s poems. See My harte I gave the not to do it paine in the Devonshire Manuscript.

1310589BL Egerton MS 2,711 — My hert I gave the not to do it payn16th century

f.13v

My hert I gave the not to do it payn
but to preserue it was to the taken
I serued the not to be forsaken
but that I should be rewarded again
5 I was content thy serunt to remayn
but not to be payed vnder this fasshion
nowe syns in the is none othee reason
displease the not if that I do refrain
vnsaciat of my woo and thy desire
10 assured be craft to excuse thy fault
but syns it please thy to fain a default
farewell I say parting from the fyer
for he that beleveth bering in hand
[] weth in the sand