I know more than Apollo;
For oft when he lies sleeping,
I behold the stars

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:
With a burning spear,

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;
Methinks it is no journey.

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?
Never were days yet called two
But one night went betwixt.

LAURA

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.

HER SACRED BOWER

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

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

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.

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,
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!