Deeds from love, and words, that flow,
Foster like kind April showers;
In the warm sun all things grow,
Wholesome fruits and pleasant flowers:
All so thrives his gentle rays
Whereon human love displays.
From John Dowland’s Second Book of Songs or Airs, 1600.
Woeful Heart, with grief oppressèd!
Fly my breast—leave me forsaken—
Wherein Grief his seat hath taken,
All his arrows through me darting!
Thou mayst live by her sunshining:
I shall suffer no more pining
By thy loss than by her parting.
From Thomas Greaves’ Songs of Sundry Kinds, 1604.
Ye bubbling springs that gentle music makes
From Farmer’s First Set of English Madrigals, 1599.
You blessèd bowers whose green leaves now are spreading,
From Thomas Morley’s First Book of Ballets, 1595.
You that wont to my pipe’s sound