I know more than Apollo; At mortal wars, And the rounded welkin weeping. The moon embraces her shepherd, And the Queen of Love her warrior; While the first does horn The stars of the morn, And the next the heavenly farrier. With a heart of furious fancies, Whereof I am commander: And a horse of air, To the wilderness I wander; With a Knight of ghosts and shadows, I summoned am to Tourney: Ten leagues beyond The wide world's end; THOMAS CAMPION Circ. 1567-1620 KIND ARE HER ANSWERS 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? LAURA ROSE-CHEEKED Laura, come; Sing thou smoothly with thy beauty's 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. HER SACRED BOWER WHERE she her sacred bower adorns The groves and meadows swell with flowers, 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; No time, no toil, no vow, no faith Yet truth can tell my heart is hers And from that love when I depart Her roses with my prayers shall spring; Their boughs shall blossom, mellow fruit The words of hearty zeal have power High wonders to effect; O, why should then her princely ear If she my faith misdeems, or worth, For though time can my truth reveal, And who can glory in the worth But from her Bower of Joy since I And she will not relieve my cares, FOLLOW FOLLOW thy fair sun, unhappy shadow, And she made all of light; Yet follow thy fair sun, unhappy shadow! Follow her whose light thy light depriveth 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 WHEN thou must home to shades of underground, 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. WESTERN WIND 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, See how the morning smiles On her bright eastern hill, |