My only books
Were woman’s looks,
And folly’s all they’ve taught me.

In these lines the speaker casts himself as a self-confessed “student” of beauty rather than of serious learning. Calling women’s looks his “only books” turns courtship and flirtation into a kind of education—one that, he admits, has yielded not wisdom but “folly.” The tone is wry and self-mocking, typical of light lyric verse that treats love as both irresistible and intellectually disarming. The couplet-like rhymes (“looks/books,” “taught me/…”) reinforce the epigrammatic snap: desire is easy to read, but it teaches lessons that lead the lover into imprudence rather than virtue.