THOMAS CAMPION Circ. 1567–1620

Kind are her answers, But her performance keeps no day; Breaks time, as dancers From their own music when they stray. All her free favours and smooth words Wing my hopes in vain. O, did ever voice so sweet but only feign? Can true love yield such delay, Converting joy to pain?

Lost is our freedom When we submit to women so: Why do we need ’em When, in their best, they work our woe? There is no wisdom Can alter ends by fate prefixt. O, why is the good of man with evil mixt? Never were days yet called two But one night went betwixt.

Rose-cheeked Laura, come; Sing thou smoothly with thy beauty’s Silent music, either other Sweetly gracing.

Lovely forms do flow From concent divinely framed; Heaven is music, and thy beauty’s Birth is heavenly.

These dull notes we sing Discords need for helps to grace them, Only beauty purely loving Knows no discord.

But still moves delight, Like clear springs renewed by flowing, Ever perfect, ever in them- Selves eternal.

Where she her sacred bower adorns The rivers clearly flow, The groves and meadows swell with flowers, The winds all gently blow. Her sun-like beauty shines so fair, Her spring can never fade. Who then can blame the life that strives To harbour in her shade?

Her grace I sought, her love I wooed; Her love though I obtain, No time, no toil, no vow, no faith Her wished grace can gain. Yet truth can tell my heart is hers And her will I adore; And from that love when I depart Let heaven view me no more!

Her roses with my prayers shall spring; And when her trees I praise, Their boughs shall blossom, mellow fruit Shall straw her pleasant ways. The words of hearty zeal have power High wonders to effect; O, why should then her princely ear My words or zeal neglect?

If she my faith misdeems, or worth, Woe worth my hapless fate! For though time can my truth reveal, That time will come too late. And who can glory in the worth That cannot yield him grace? Content in everything is not, Nor joy in every place.

But from her Bower of Joy since I Must now excluded be, And she will not relieve my cares, Which none can help but she; My comfort in her love shall dwell, Her love lodge in my breast, And though not in her bower, yet I Shall in her temple rest.

Follow thy fair sun, unhappy shadow, Though thou be black as night, And she made all of light; Yet follow thy fair sun, unhappy shadow!

Follow her whose light thy light depriveth; Though here thou live disgraced And she in heaven is placed; Yet follow her whose light the world reviveth.

Follow those pure beams whose beauty burneth That so have scorched thee As thou still black must be, Till her kind beams thy black to brightness turneth.

Follow her while yet her glory shineth; There comes a luckless night That will dim all her light; And this the black unhappy shade divineth.

Follow still since so thy fates ordained; The sun must have his shade, Till both at once do fade; The sun still proved, the shadow still disdained.

When thou must home to shades of underground, And there arrived, a new admired guest, The beauteous spirits do engird thee round, White Iope, blithe Helen, and the rest, To hear the stories of thy finished love, From that smooth tongue whose music hell can move; Then wilt thou speak of banqueting delights, Of masks and revels which sweet youth did make, Of tourneys and great challenges of knights, And all these triumphs for thy beauties’ sake: When thou hast told these honours done to thee, Then tell, O tell, how thou didst murther me.

The peaceful western wind The winter storms hath tamed, And nature in each kind The kind heat hath inflamed: The forward buds so sweetly breathe Out of their earthly bowers, That heav’n, which views their pomp beneath, Would fain be decked with flowers.

See how the morning smiles On her bright eastern hill, And with soft steps beguiles Them that lie slumbering still! The music-loving birds are come From cliffs and rocks unknown, To see the trees and briars bloom That late were overflown.

What Saturn did destroy, Love’s Queen revives again; And now her naked boy Doth in the fields remain, Where he such pleasing change doth view In every living thing, As if the world were born anew To gratify the Spring.

If all things life present, Why die my comforts then? Why suffers my content? Am I the worst of men? O beauty, be not thou accus’d Too justly in this case! Unkindly if true love be used, ’Twill yield thee little grace.

Follow your saint, follow with accents sweet! Haste you, sad notes, fall at her flying feet! There, wrapped in cloud of sorrow, pity move, And tell the ravisher of my soul I perish for her love; But if she scorns my never-ceasing pain, Then burst with sighing in her sight and ne’er return again.

All that I sang still to her praise did tend, Still she was first, still she my songs did end; Yet she my love and music both doth fly, The music that her echo is and beauty’s sympathy. Then let my notes pursue her scornful flight! It shall suffice that they were breathed and died for her delight.

There is a garden in her face Where roses and white lilies blow; A heavenly paradise is that place, Wherein all pleasant fruits do grow; There cherries grow that none may buy, Till Cherry-Ripe themselves do cry.

Those cherries fairly do enclose Of orient pearl a double row, Which when her lovely laughter shows, They look like rosebuds filled with snow: Yet them no peer nor prince may buy, Till Cherry-Ripe themselves do cry.

Her eyes like angels watch them still; Her brows like bended bows do stand, Threat’ning with piercing frowns to kill All that approach with eye or hand These sacred cherries to come nigh, Till Cherry-Ripe themselves do cry!