When Flora fair the pleasant tidings bringeth
From William Byrd’s Songs of Sundry Natures, 1589.
When I was otherwise than now I am,
As watermen which on the Thames do row,
Look to the east but west keeps on the way;
My sovereign sweet her count’nance settled so,
To feed my hope while she her snares might lay:
And when she saw that I was in her danger,
Good God, how soon she provèd then a ranger!
I could not choose but laugh, although too late,
To see great craft decypher’d in a toy;
I love her still, but such conditions hate
Which so profanes my paradise of joy.
Love whets the wits, whose pain is but a pleasure;
A toy, by fits to play withal at leisure.
From Campion and Rosseter’s Book of Airs, 1601.
When thou must home to shades of underground,
Then wilt thou speak of banqueting delights,
Of masques and revels which sweet youth did make,
Of tourneys and great challenges of Knights,
And all these triumphs for thy beauty sake:
When thou hast told these honours done to thee,
Then tell, O tell, how thou didst murder me.
From William Byrd’s Songs of Sundry Natures, 1589.
δεινὸς Ἔρως, δεινός· τί δὲ τὸ πλέον, ἢν πάλιν εἴπω,
καὶ πάλιν, οἰμώζων πολλάκι, δεινὸς Ἔρως;
Meleag.