Lover's Knot Poem.

Bookseller Notes

A very clear and attractive late eighteenth/early nineteenth-century lover's knot - an enduring emblem - with a poem entwined: 'This is Love and worth commending / Still beginning and Never ending / Reaching Spreading Round A Boute / Always Turning in and Oute / Still Increasing Still Renewin / Crossing meeting Still Continuing / Winds This Way That Way / Bending without Beginning without ending / True Love Stiring Still in Action / always tending to Perfection / No Croas can stop true Lovers Intent/ but it goes on to what is Meant/and though It meete with many a one / true love makes A Cross seem none / To those Who never Love But one / Love of many is true Lovers Bane / and such shall be coast and croast Again who (who) Loves to Love must lean o know'. Start is a common Devonian surname; there are Samuel and John Starts (1786-1840) listed as having lived in Lyme Regis, whose genealogies broadly accord with the details here. A charming early handmade valentine in unusually good condition.