Campion’s early devotion to music and poetry caused him some difficulty in choosing a profession for a livelihood. He studied at Cambridge, but did not take a degree; he entered Gray’s Inn for the study of law, but did not go to the bar; finally, he took a degree in medicine and returned to London to practice.
Campion was the only song writer of his day who wrote both the words and music of his songs. Though he was not so great a musician as some others, especially Dowland, he is certainly the greatest poet of the song tradition. Unlike many of his fellows, Campion did not make a very firm distinction between the song and the poem. In a note to the reader in Two Books of Airs, he writes: “Short airs, if they be skillfully framed and naturally expressed, are like quick and good epigrams in poesy, many of them showing as much artifice, and breeding as great difficulty as a larger poem.”
Campion is among the purest stylists in the language. Though by virtue of his immersion in the song tradition, by his choice of subjects, and by the nature of some of his detail, he must be accounted a Petrarchan, he is nevertheless a remarkably restrained one. He was aware of the foreign source of the song: “. . . some there are who admit only French or Italian airs, as if every country had not his proper air. . . .” But he wished to go beyond the prevailing practice. In a note to the Fourth Book of Airs, he writes: “The apothecaries have books of gold, whose leaves being opened are so light as that they are subject to be shaken with the least breath; yet rightly handled, they serve both ornament and use. . . .”
For both ornament and use, then, were Campion’s airs composed and written. Gently moving, at once gay and profound, delicate and somber, his voice is one that lingers when others more strident have ceased.
TEXT:
Campion’s Works, edited by Percival Vivian (1909).
MY SWEETEST LESBIA
My sweetest Lesbia, let us live and love;
And though the sager sort our deeds reprove,
Let us not weigh them: heaven’s great lamps do dive
Into their west, and straight again revive:
But soon as once set is our little light,
Then must we sleep one ever-during night.
If all would lead their lives in love like me,
Then bloody swords and armor should not be;
No drum nor trumpet peaceful sleeps should move,
Unless alarm came from the camp of love:
But fools do live, and waste their little light,
And seek with pain their ever-during night.
When timely death my life and fortune ends,
Let not my hearse be vexed with mourning friends;
But let all lovers, rich in triumph, come
And with sweet pastimes grace my happy tomb:
And, Lesbia, close up thou my little light,
And crown with love my ever-during night.
THOUGH YOU ARE YOUNG
Though you are young, and I am old,
Though your veins hot, and my blood cold,
Though youth is moist, and age is dry;
Yet embers live, when flames do die.
The tender graft is easily broke,
But who shall shake the sturdy oak?
You are more fresh and fair than I;
Yet stubs do live when flowers do die.
Thou, that thy youth dost vainly boast,
Know buds are soonest nipped with frost:
Think that thy fortune still doth cry,
“Thou fool, tomorrow thou must die.”
FOLLOW THY FAIR SUN
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 livest 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 scorchëd 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 ordainëd.
The sun must have his shade,
Till both at once do fade,
The sun still proud, the shadow still disdainëd.
When to her lute Corinna sings,
Her voice revives the leaden strings,
And doth in highest notes appear,
As any challenged echo clear;
But when she doth of mourning speak,
Even with her sighs the strings do break.
And as her lute doth live or die,
Led by her passion, so must I.
For when of pleasure she doth sing,
My thoughts enjoy a sudden spring;
But if she doth of sorrow speak,
Even from my heart the strings do break.
FOLLOW YOUR SAINT
Follow your saint, follow with accents sweet;
Haste you, sad notes, fall at her flying feet:
There, wrapped in cloud of sorrow, pity move,
And tell the ravisher of my soul I perish for her love.
But if she scorns my never-ceasing pain,
Then burst with sighing in her sight, and ne’er return again.
All that I sung still to her praise did tend;
Still she was first, still she my songs did end.
Yet she my love and music both doth fly,
That music that her echo is and beauty’s sympathy.
Then let my notes pursue her scornful flight:
It shall suffice that they were breathed and died for her delight.
Thou art not fair, for all thy red and white,
For all those rosy ornaments in thee;
Thou art not sweet, though made of mere delight,
Nor fair nor sweet, unless thou pity me.
I will not soothe thy fancies: thou shalt prove
That beauty is no beauty without love.
Yet love not me, nor seek thou to allure
My thoughts with beauty, were it more divine:
Thy smiles and kisses I cannot endure;
I’ll not be wrapped up in those arms of thine.
Now show it, if thou be a woman right,—
Embrace, and kiss, and love me, in despite!
WHEN THOU MUST HOME
When thou must home to shades of underground,
And there arrived, a new admirëd guest,
The beauteous spirits do engirt 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 masques and revels which sweet youth did make,
Of tourneys and great challenges of knights,
And all these triumphs for thy beauty’s sake:
When thou hast told these honors done to thee,
Then tell, O tell, how thou didst murder me.
WHAT THEN IS LOVE BUT MOURNING
What then is love but mourning?
What desire, but a self-burning?
Till she, that hates, doth love return,
Thus will I mourn, thus will I sing:
Come away, come away, my darling.
Beauty is but a blooming,
Youth in his glory entombing;
Time hath a while, which none can stay;
Then come away, while thus I sing:
Come away, come away, my darling.
Summer in winter fadeth;
Gloomy night heavenly light shadeth;
Like to the morn are Venus’ flowers;
Such are her hours. Then will I sing:
Come away, come away, my darling.
WHETHER MEN DO LAUGH OR WEEP
Whether men do laugh or weep,
Whether they do wake or sleep,
Whether they die young or old,
Whether they feel heat or cold;
There is, underneath the sun,
Nothing in true earnest done.
All our pride is but a jest;
None are worst, and none are best;
Grief and joy, and hope and fear,
Play their pageants everywhere:
Vain opinion all doth sway,
And the world is but a play.
Powers above in clouds do sit,
Mocking our poor apish wit,
That so lamely, with such state,
Their high glory imitate:
No ill can be felt but pain,
And that happy men disdain.
ROSE-CHEEKED LAURA
Rose-cheeked Laura, come,
Sing thou smoothly with thy beauties
Silent music, either other
Sweetly gracing.
Lovely forms do flow
From consent divinely framëd;
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.
THE MAN OF LIFE UPRIGHT
The man of life upright,
Whose cheerful mind is free
From weight of impious deeds
And yoke of vanity;
In harmless joys are spent,
Whom hopes cannot delude
Nor sorrows discontent;
That man needs neither towers
Nor armor for defense,
Nor vaults his guilt to shroud
From thunder’s violence:
He only can behold
With unaffrighted eyes
The horrors of the deep
And terrors of the skies.
Thus, scorning all the cares
That fate or fortune brings,
His book the Heavens he makes,
His wisdom heavenly things,
Good thoughts his surest friends,
His wealth a well-spent age,
The earth his sober inn
And quiet pilgrimage.
TO MUSIC BENT IS MY RETIRËD MIND
To music bent is my retirëd mind,
And fain would I some song of pleasure sing;
But in vain joys no comfort now I find:
From heavenly thoughts all true delight doth spring.
Thy power, O God, thy mercies, to record,
Will sweeten every note and every word.
All earthly pomp or beauty to express
Is but to carve in snow, on waves to write;
Celestial things, though men conceive them less,
Yet fullest are they in themselves of light.
Such beams they yield as know no means to die,
Such heat they cast as lifts the spirit high.
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 earthy bowers,
That heaven, 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.
The music-loving birds are come
From cliffs and rocks unknown,
To see the trees and briars bloom
That late were overflown.
What Saturn did destroy,
Love’s Queen revives again;
And now her naked boy
Doth in the fields remain,
Where he such pleasing change doth view
In every living thing,
As if the world were born anew
To gratify the spring.
If all things life present,
Why die my comforts then?
Why suffers my content?
Am I the worst of men?
O, Beauty, be not thou accused
Too justly in this case:
Unkindly if true love be used,
’Twill yield thee little grace.
Now winter nights enlarge
The number of their hours,
And clouds their storms discharge
Upon the airy towers.
Let now the chimneys blaze
And cups o’erflow with wine;
Let well-tuned words amaze
With harmony divine!
Now yellow waxen lights
Shall wait on honey love
While youthful revels, masques and Courtly sights,
Sleep’s leaden spells remove.
This time doth well dispense
With lovers’ long discourse;
Much speech hath some defence,
Though beauty no remorse.
All do not all things well;
Some measures comely tread,
Some knotted riddles tell,
Some poems smoothly read.
The summer hath his joys,
And winter his delights;
Though love and all his pleasures are but toys,
They shorten tedious nights.
SHALL I COME, SWEET LOVE
Shall I come, sweet love, to thee,
When the evening beams are set?
Shall I not excluded be?
Will you find no feignëd let?
Let me not, for pity, more
Tell the long hours at your door.
Who can tell what thief or foe,
In the covert of the night,
For his prey will work my woe,
Or through wicked foul despite?
So may I die unredressed,
Ere my long love be possessed.
But to let such dangers pass,
Which a lover’s thoughts disdain,
’Tis enough in such a place
To attend love’s joys in vain.
Do not mock me in thy bed,
While these cold nights freeze me dead.
SLEEP, ANGRY BEAUTY
Sleep, angry beauty, sleep, and fear not me;
For who a sleeping lion dares provoke?
It shall suffice me here to sit and see
Those lips shut up that never kindly spoke.
What sight can more content a lover’s mind
Than beauty seeming harmless, if not kind?
My words have charmed her, for secure she sleeps,
Though guilty much of wrong done to my love;
And in her slumber, see! she, close-eyed, weeps;
Dreams often more than waking passions move.
Plead, Sleep, my cause, and make her soft like thee,
That she in peace may wake and pity me.
THERE IS A GARDEN IN HER FACE
There is a garden in her face,
Where roses and white lilies grow;
A heavenly paradise is that place,
Wherein all pleasant fruits do flow.
There cherries grow, which none may buy
Till “Cherry ripe” themselves do cry.
Those cherries fairly do enclose
Of orient pearl a double row,
Which when her lovely laughter shows,
They look like rosebuds filled with snow.
Yet them nor peer nor prince can buy
Till “Cherry ripe” themselves do cry.
Her eyes like angels watch them still;
Her brows like bended bows do stand,
Threatening with piercing frowns to kill
All that attempt, with eye or hand,
Those sacred cherries to come nigh
Till “Cherry ripe” themselves do cry.
COME, FOLLOW ME
Come, follow me, my wandering mates,
Sons and daughters of the Fates:
Friends of night, that oft have done
Homage to the hornëd moon,
Fairly march and shun not light
With such stars as these made bright.
Yet bend you low your curlëd tops,
Touch the hallowed earth, and then
Rise again with antic hops
Unused of men.
Here no danger is, nor fear,
For true honor harbors here,
Whom grace attends.
Grace can make our foes our friends.
WHAT IF A DAY
What if a day, or a month, or a year
Crown thy delights with a thousand sweet contentings?
Cannot a chance of a night or an hour
Cross thy desires with as many sad tormentings?
Are but blossoms dying;
Wanton pleasure, doting love,
Are but shadows flying.
All our joys are but toys,
Idle thoughts deceiving;
None have power of an hour
In their lives’ bereaving.
Earth’s but a point to the world, and a man
Is but a point to the world’s comparëd censure;
Shall then the point of a point be so vain
As to triumph in a silly point’s adventure?
All is hazard that we have,
There is nothing biding;
Days of pleasure are like streams
Through fair meadows gliding.
Weal and woe, time doth go,
Time is never turning:
Secret fates guide our states,
Both in mirth and mourning.
feignëd let: i.e., pretended hindrance.