Canst thou love and lie alone?
Love is so disgraced,
Pleasure is best
Wherein is rest
In a heart embraced.
Rise, rise, rise!
Daylight do not burn out;
Bells do ring and birds do sing,
Only I that mourn out.
Morning-star doth now appear,
Wind is hushed and sky is clear;
Come, come away, come, come away!
Canst thou love and burn out day?
Rise, rise, rise!
Daylight do not burn out;
Bells do ring [and] birds do sing,
Only I that mourn out.
From ROBERT DOWLAND's _Musical Banquet_, 1610. (Lines by the Earl of
Essex.)
Change thy mind since she doth change,
Let not fancy still abuse thee,
Thy untruth cannot seem strange
When her falsehood doth excuse thee:
Love is dead and thou art free,
She doth live but dead to thee.
Whilst she loved thee best a while,
See how she hath still delayed thee:
Using shows for to beguile,
Those vain hopes that have deceived thee:
Now thou seest, although too late,
Love loves truth which women hate.
Love no more since she is gone,
She is gone and loves another:
Being once deceived by one,
Leave her love but love none other.
She was false, bid her adieu,
She was best but yet untrue.
Love, farewell, more dear to me
Than my life, which thou preservest.
Life, all joys are gone from thee;
Others have what thou deservest.
Oh my death doth spring from hence,
I must die for her offence.
Die, but yet before thou die,
Make her know what she hath gotten,
She in whom my hopes did lie
Now is changed, I quite forgotten.
She is changed, but changed base,
Baser in so vild a place.
From THOMAS WEELKES' _Madrigals of Five and Six Parts_, 1600.
Cold Winter's ice is fled and gone,
And Summer brags on every tree,
The red-breast peeps amidst the throng
Of wood-born birds that wanton be:
Each one forgets what they have been,
And so doth Phyllis, Summer's queen.
From JOHN DOWLAND's _First Book of Songs or Airs_, 1597.
Come away! come, sweet Love!
The golden morning breaks;
All the earth, all the air,
Of love and pleasure speaks!
Teach thine arms then to embrace,
And sweet rosy lips to kiss,
And mix our souls in mutual bliss.
Eyes were made for beauty's grace
Viewing, ruing, love's long pain;
Procured by beauty's rude disdain.
Come away![3] come, sweet Love!
The golden morning wastes
While the sun from his sphere
His fiery arrows casts:
Making all the shadows fly,
Playing, staying in the grove
To entertain the stealth of love.
Thither, sweet Love, let us hie,
Flying, dying in desire,
Wing'd with sweet hopes and heavenly fire.
Come away! come, sweet Love!
Do not in vain adorn
Beauty's grace, that should rise
Like to our naked morn!
Lilies on the river's side,
And fair Cyprian flowers new-blown,
Desire no beauties but their own:
Ornament is nurse of pride.
Pleasure measure[s] love's delight:
Haste then, sweet love, our wished flight!
[3] This stanza is not in the original, but is added in _England's
Helicon_.
From THOMAS CAMPION's _Third Book of Airs_ (circ. 1613).
Come, O come, my life's delight!
Let me not in languor pine!
Love loves no delay; thy sight
The more enjoyed, the more divine!
O come, and take from me
The pain of being deprived of thee!
Thou all sweetness dost enclose,
Like a little world of bliss;
Beauty guards thy looks, the rose
In them pure and eternal is:
Come, then, and make thy flight
As swift to me as heavenly light!
From THOMAS FORD's _Music of Sundry Kinds_, 1607.
Come, Phyllis, come into these bowers:
Here shelter is from sharpest showers,
Cool gales of wind breathe in these shades,
Danger none this place invades;
Here sit and note the chirping birds
Pleading my love in silent words.
Come, Phyllis, come, bright heaven's eye
Cannot upon thy beauty pry;
Glad Echo in distinguished voice
Naming thee will here rejoice;
Then come and hear her merry lays
Crowning thy name with lasting praise.
From JOHN WILBYE's _Second Set of Madrigals_, 1609.
Come, shepherd swains, that wont to hear me sing,
Now sigh and groan!
Dead is my Love, my Hope, my Joy, my Spring;
Dead, dead, and gone!
O, She that was your Summer's Queen,
Your days' delight,
Is gone and will no more be seen;
O, cruel spite!
Break all your pipes that wont to sound
With pleasant cheer,
And cast yourselves upon the ground
To wail my Dear!
Come, shepherd swains, come, nymphs, and all a-row
To help me cry:
Dead is my Love, and, seeing She is so,
Lo, now I die!
From _Two Books of Airs_, by THOMAS CAMPION (circ. 1613).
Come, you pretty false-eyed wanton,
Leave your crafty smiling!
Think you to escape me now
With slipp'ry words beguiling?
No; you mocked me th' other day;
When you got loose, you fled away;
But, since I have caught you now,
I'll clip your wings for flying:
Smoth'ring kisses fast I'll heap
And keep you so from crying.
Sooner may you count the stars
And number hail down-pouring,
Tell the osiers of the Thames,
Or Goodwin sands devouring,
Than the thick-showered kisses here
Which now thy tired lips must bear.
Such a harvest never was
So rich and full of pleasure,
But 'tis spent as soon as reaped,
So trustless is lore's treasure.
From THOMAS CAMPION's _Third Book of Airs_ (circ. 1613).
Could my heart more tongues employ
Than it harbours thoughts of grief,
It is now so far from joy
That it scarce could ask relief:
Truest hearts by deeds unkind
To despair are most inclined.
Happy minds that can redeem
Their engagements how they please,
That no joys or hopes esteem
Half so precious as their ease:
Wisdom should prepare men so,
As if they did all foreknow.
Yet no art or caution can
Grown affections easily change;
Use is such a lord of man
That he brooks worst what is strange:
Better never to be blest
Than to lose all at the best.
From WILLIAM BYRD's _Psalms, Songs, and Sonnets_, 1611.
Crowned with flowers I saw fair Amaryllis
By Thyrsis sit, hard by a fount of crystal,
And with her hand more white than snow or lilies,
On sand she wrote _My faith shall be immortal_:
And suddenly a storm of wind and weather
Blew all her faith and sand away together.
From THOMAS RAVENSCROFT's _Brief Discourse_, 1614.