This poem is found with many variations in five manuscripts. We follow Leicester Bradner, The Poems of Queen Elizabeth, in using the British Museum's Harleian 7392 as the basis for our text. The Bodleian Library's Rawlinson manuscript, written between 1590 and 1600, also contains a version of the poem and states, furthermore, that it was written when Elizabeth "was suposed to be in love with mounsyre," that is, her French suitor, the duke of Anjou. Some modern scholars doubt that Elizabeth wrote the poem, but all accept it as an important cultural document about her. When I Was Fair and Young (ca. 1585) When I was fair and young, then favor graced me. Of many was I sought their mistress for to be, But I did scorn them all and answered them therefore: Go, go, go, seek some other where, importune me no more. 5 How many weeping eyes I made to pine in woe, How many sighing hearts I have not skill to show, But I the prouder grew and still this spake therefore: Go, go, go, seek some other where, importune me no more. Then spake fair Venus' son, that brave victorious boy, 10 Saying: You dainty dame, for that you be so coy, I will so pluck your plumes as you shall say no more: Go, go, go, seek some other where, importune me no more. As soon as he had said, such change grew in my breast That neither night nor day I could take any