From John Dowland’s First Book of Songs or Airs, 1597.
My Thoughts are winged with Hopes, my Hopes with Love:
And you, my Thoughts, that some mistrust do carry,
If for mistrust my mistress do you blame,
Say, though you alter, yet you do not vary,
As she doth change and yet remain the same;
Distrust doth enter hearts, but not infect,
And Love is sweetest seasoned with Suspect.
If she for this with clouds do mask her eyes
And make the heavens dark with her disdain,
With windy sighs disperse them in the skies
Or with thy tears dissolve them into rain.
Thoughts, Hopes, and Love, return to me no more
Till Cynthia shine as she hath done before.
From Thomas Campion’s Third Book of Airs (circ. 1613).
Never love unless you can
Men that but one saint adore
Make a show of love to more;
Beauty must be scorned in none,
Though but truly served in one:
For what is courtship but disguise?
True hearts may have dissembling eyes.
Men, when their affairs require,
Must awhile themselves retire;
Sometimes hunt, and sometimes hawk,
And not ever sit and talk:
If these and such-like you can bear,
Then like, and love, and never fear!
From John Farmer’s First Set of English Madrigals, 1599. (Verses by Samuel Daniel.)
Now each creature joys the other,