Many were the wit-combates betwixt him [Shakespeare] and Ben Johnson [sic], which two I behold like a Spanish great Gallion, and an English man of War; Master Johnson (like the former) was built far higher in Learning; Solid, but Slow in his performances. Shake-spear with the English-man of War, lesser in bulk, but lighter in sailing, could turn with all tides, tack about and take advantage of all winds, by the quickness of his Wit and Invention.
THOMAS FULLER: The History of the Worthies of England (1662)
We know very little about Shakespeare. There is a rather formal portrait of him by Martin Droeshout printed in the First Folio; a much more revealing one, attributed to John Taylor, depicting him with an earring; and a plaster cast after Gerard Johnson’s marble effigy in Holy Trinity Church at Stratford-on-Avon, showing the playwright as a plump bourgeois. The son of a glover, he married, aged eighteen, a local woman called Anne Hathwey or Hathaway, eight years his senior, who bore him three children: Susanna in 1583, and the twins Hamnet and Judith in 1585. His first published works were poems, not plays; from 1594 he was an actor and shareholder in the Lord Chamberlain’s Men, a troupe which in 1603 became the King’s Men – a sign of their increasing success. Their headquarters was the Globe in Southwark, built in 1599. They also performed at a private theatre in Blackfriars that was leased by Richard Burbage, a leading Shakespearian actor. In 1604 Shakespeare was living with a Huguenot family in London, but he was also active in Stratford, where he had bought New Place, an impressive house, in 1597. He began writing for the stage in the late 1580s, and half of his plays appeared in print during his lifetime. He probably retired to Stratford in about 1612. Tradition has it that he died in the company of Ben Jonson and Michael Drayton, and according to the Revd John Ward, Vicar of Stratford (c.1662), ‘Drayton and Ben Jonson had a merry meeting, and, it seems, drank too hard, for Shakespeare died of a fever there contracted.’ Shakespeare, however, was usually abstemious, and it seems more likely that he died of typhoid fever, which was prevalent in the area during 1616. The First Folio (Mr. William Shakespeare’s Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies) appeared in 1623, seven years after his death.
W. H. Auden, in an essay titled ‘Music in Shakespeare’ from The Dyer’s Hand (Faber and Faber, 1948), distinguishes two kinds of songs in Shakespeare’s plays, the ‘called-for’ and the ‘impromptu’, which, he writes, serve different dramatic purposes:
A called-for song is a song which is sung by one character at the request of another who wishes to hear music, so that action and speech are halted until the song is over. Nobody is asked to sing unless it is believed that he can sing well and, little as we may know about the music which was actually used in performances of Shakespeare, we may safely assume from the contemporary songs that we do possess that they must have made demands which only a good voice and a good musician could satisfy. […]
The impromptu singer stops speaking and breaks into song, not because anyone else has asked him to sing or is listening, but to relieve his feelings in a way that speech cannot do or to help him in some action. An impromptu song is not art but a form of personal behaviour. It reveals, as the called-for song cannot, something about the singer. On the stage, therefore, it is generally desirable that a character who breaks into impromptu song should not have a good voice. No producer, for example, would seek to engage Madame Callas for the part of Ophelia, because the beauty of her voice would distract the audience’s attention from the real dramatic point which is that Ophelia’s songs are to the highest degree not called-for. We are meant to be horrified both by what she sings and by the fact that she sings at all. The other characters are affected but not in the way that people are affected by music.
The play texts printed here are those of the First Folio (1623), compiled by John Heminges and Henry Condell. They explain in their Introduction that they got rid of all the bad versions (the ‘diuerse stolne, and surreptitious copies, maimed, and deformed by the frauds and stealthes of iniurious impostors’) and restored the plays to their ‘True Originall’ condition, using prompt books, foul papers (the term used for rough drafts) in Shakespeare’s hand and fair copies. Although posterity owes Heminges and Condell a huge debt, the First Folio has a number of misprints and typographical idiosyncrasies – which have been retained in The Penguin Book of English Song. The titles of the poems were supplied by the composers.
Who is Siluia? what is she?
That all our Swaines commend her?
Holy, faire, and wise is she,
The heauen such grace did lend her,
that she might admired be.
Is she kinde as she is faire?
For beauty liues with kindnesse:1
Loue doth to her eyes repaire,
To helpe him of his blindnesse:
And being help’d, inhabits there.
Then to Siluia, let vs sing,
That Siluia is excelling;
She excels each mortall thing
Vpon the dull earth dwelling.
To her let vs Garlands bring.
(Castelnuovo-Tedesco, German, Horder, Lehmann, Quilter, Rubbra, Schubert)
Spring
When Dasies pied, and Violets blew,
And Cuckow-buds1 of yellow hew:
And Ladie-smockes2 all siluer white,
Do paint the Medowes with delight
The Cuckow then on euerie tree,
Mockes married men, for thus sings he,
Cuckow.
Cuckow, Cuckow: O word of feare,
Vnpleasing to a married eare.
When Shepheards pipe on Oaten strawes,
And merrie Larkes are Ploughmens clockes:3
When Turtles tread4, and Rookes and Dawes,
And Maidens bleach their summer smockes:
The Cuckow then on euerie tree
Mockes married men; for thus sings he,
Cuckow.
Cuckow, Cuckow: O word of feare,
Vnpleasing to a married eare.
(Arne, Bush, Castelnuovo-Tedesco, Dring, Finzi, Fortner, Füßl, Gurney, Horder, Jeffreys, Rawsthorne, Stravinsky, Taubert, Vaughan Williams, Warlock)
Winter
When Isicles hang by the wall,
And Dicke the Sphepheard blowes his naile;1
And Tom beares Logges into the hall,
And Milke comes frozen home in paile:
When blood is nipt, and waies be fowle,
Then nightly sings the staring Owle
Tu-whit to-who.
A merrie note,
While greasie Ione doth keele2 the pot.
When all aloud the winde doth blow,
And coffing drownes the Parsons saw:3
And birds sit brooding in the snow,
And Marrians nose lookes red and raw:
When roasted Crabs4 hisse in the bowle,
Then nightly sings the staring Owle,
Tu-whit to who:
A merrie note,
While greasie Ione doth keele the pot.
(Argento, Arne, Blake, Brian, Castelnuovo-Tedesco, Dankworth, Finzi, Fortner, Füßl, Gardiner, Gibbs, Gurney, Keel, Lehmann, Marzials, Parry, Quilter, Rutter, Sviridov, Taubert, Vaughan Williams)
Tell me where is fancie2 bred,
Or in the heart, or in the head:
How begot, how nourished. Replie, replie.
It is engendred in the eyes,
With gazing fed, and Fancie dies,
In the cradle where it lies:
Let vs all ring Fancies knell.
Ile begin it.
Ding dong, bell.
All. Ding, dong, bell.
(Arne, Brian, Britten, Bush, Castelnuovo-Tedesco, Coates, Gardner, Heise, Kodály, Lehmann, O’Neill, Quilter, Rutter, Taubert, Walton, Warlock, Weber)
Balthasar
Sigh no more Ladies, sigh no more,
Men were deceiuers euer,
One foote in Sea, and one on shore,
Then sigh not so, but let them goe,
And be you blithe and bonnie,
Conuerting all your sounds of woe,
Into hey nony nony.
Sing no more ditties, sing no moe,
Of dumps so dull and heauy,
The fraud of men were euer so,
Since summer first was leauy,
Then sigh not so, but let them goe,
And be you blithe and bonnie,
Conuerting all your sounds of woe,
Into hey nony nony.
(Arne, Bush, Castelnuovo-Tedesco, Coates, Heise, Jeffreys, Keel, Korngold, Lehmann, Mathias, Moeran, Quilter, Plumstead, C. Scott, Vaughan Williams)
Vnder the greene wood tree,
who loues to lye with mee,
And turne1 his merrie Note,
vnto the sweet Birds throte:
Come hither, come hither, come hither:
Heere shall he see no enemie,
But Winter and rough Weather.
(Arne, Horder, Howells, Parry, Quilter, C. Scott, Walton)
Amiens
Blow, blow, thou winter winde,
Thou art not so vnkinde1, as mans ingratitude
Thy tooth is not so keene, because thou art not seene,
although thy breath be rude.
Heigh ho, sing heigh ho, vnto the greene holly2,
Most frendship, is fayning; most Louing, meere folly:
The heigh ho, the holly,
This Life is most iolly.
Freize, freize, thou bitter skie that dost not bight so nigh
as benefitts forgot:
Though thou the waters warpe3, thy sting is not so sharpe,
as freind remembred not.
Heigh ho, sing heigh ho, vnto the greene holly,
Most frendship is fayning; most Louing, meere folly:
The heigh ho, the holly,
This Life is most iolly.
(Arne, Blake, Brian, Bridge, Castelnuovo-Tedesco, Dring, Finzi, Fortner, Gibbs, Gurney, Heise, Horder, Killmayer, Korngold, Marzials, Mathias, Nicolai, Parry, Rawsthorne, Rutter, Somervell, Stenhammar, Sullivan, Sviridov)
It was a Louer, and his lasse,
With a hey, and a ho, and a hey nonino,
That o’re the greene corne feild did passe,
In the spring time, the onely pretty rang time1,
When Birds do sing, hey ding a ding, ding.
Sweet Louers loue the spring.
Betweene the acres2 of the Rie,
With a hey, and a ho, & a hey nonino:
These prettie Country folks would lie,
In spring time, the onely pretty rang time,
When Birds do sing, hey ding a ding, ding.
Sweet Louers loue the spring.
And therefore take the present time,
With a hey, & a ho, and a hey nonino,
For loue is crowned with the prime3,
In spring time, the onely pretty rang time,
When Birds do sing, hey ding a ding, ding.
Sweet Louers loue the spring.
(Bax, Berger, Brian, Bush, Castelnuovo-Tedesco, Coates, Delius, Dring, Dunhill, Finzi, German, Heise, Jeffreys, Korngold, Lehmann, Marzials, Moeran, Morley, O’Neill, Parry, Quilter, Rubbra, Rutter, Schulz, Taubert, Vaughan Williams)
Ophelia’s madness is triggered by the death of her father, Polonius (accidentally killed by Hamlet), and by Hamlet’s brutal behaviour towards her. When his mother, Queen Gertrude, marries Claudius a mere two months after the latter’s murder of her husband (his own brother and Hamlet’s father), Hamlet is torn between his love for Ophelia and the repugnance he now feels for all women. Whenever he encounters Ophelia, he uses language that is drenched in sexual innuendo. Disinhibited in her grief, which slowly turns to madness, Ophelia begins to echo this lewd language.
Strauss’s Drei Lieder der Ophelia have an intriguing history. When the publishing house of Bote & Bock agreed to publish his Op. 56, they inserted a clause in his contract which stipulated that they would hold the rights to his next group of songs. Such a clause was now anathema to Strauss, whose ambitions to protect the rights of German composers in matters of fees and royalties had led to the founding of a Society of German Composers and – subsequently – the founding of a rival society by Bote & Bock to protect their interests. Strauss’s refusal to write a group of songs for them meant that for twelve years after the publication of Op. 56 he composed no further Lieder – until in 1918 the Berlin publishers threatened him with legal action. Strauss’s response was to compose the scurrilous Krämerspiegel, a vitriolic attack on music publishers, which Bote & Bock refused to accept. To break the deadlock, Strauss dashed off his Op. 67, which comprised three mad-Ophelia songs and three bad-tempered songs from the ‘Book of Ill-Humour’ from Goethe’s West-östlicher Divan. Unlike Brahms’s Ophelia-Lieder, which were intended to be sung unaccompanied, Strauss’s are set to piano accompaniments that stress Ophelia’s insanity: the little wandering motif and dissonances of ‘Wie erkenn’ ich mein Treulieb’, the bizarre flapping syncopations of ‘Guten Morgen, ’s ist Sankt Valentinstag’, and in ‘Sie trugen ihn auf der Bahre bloß’ the abrupt shifts in tempi.
How should I your true loue know from another one?
By his Cockle hat and staffe,1 and his Sandal shoone.
He is dead and gone Lady, he is dead and gone,
At his head a grasse-greene Turfe, at his heeles a stone.
White his Shrow’d as the Mountaine Snow.
Larded2 with sweet flowers:
Which bewept to the graue did not go,
With true-loue showres.
(Borg, Brahms, Bush, Castelnuovo-Tedesco, Chausson, Lassen, Maconchy, Quilter, Reutter, White)
Tomorrow is S. Valentines day, all in the morning betime,
And I a Maid at your Window, to be your Valentine.
Then vp he rose, & don’d his clothes, & dupt1 the chamber dore,
Let in the Maid, that out a Maid, neuer departed more.
By gis2, and by S. Charity,
Alacke, and fie for shame:
Yong men wil doo’t, if they come too’t,
By Cocke3 they are too blame.
Quoth she before you tumbled me,
You promis’d me to Wed:
So would I ha done by yonder Sunne,
And thou hadst not come to my bed.
(Borg, Brahms, Reutter)
They bore him bare fac’d on the Beer,
Hey non nony, nony, hey nony:
And on his graue raines many a teare,
Fare you well my Doue.
For bonny sweet Robin is all my ioy.
And will he not come againe,
And will he not come againe:
No, no, he is dead, go to thy Death-bed,
He neuer wil come againe.
His Beard as white as Snow,
All Flaxen was his Pole1:
He is gone, he is gone, and we cast away mone,
Gramercy on his Soule.
(Borg, Brahms, Lassen, Rawsthorne, Reutter)
Duke
[And what’s her history?]
Viola
[A blanke my Lord:] she neuer told her loue,
But let concealment like a worme i’th budde
Feede on her damaske cheeke: [she pin’d in thought,
And with a greene and yellow melancholly,]
She sate like Patience1 on a Monument,
Smiling at greefe.
(Borg)
Feste
O Mistris mine where are you roming?
O stay and heare, your true loues coming,
That can sing both high and low.
Trip no further prettie sweeting.
Iourneys end in louers meeting,
Euery wise mans sonne doth know.
What is loue, tis not heereafter,
Present mirth, hath present laughter:
What’s to come, is still unsure.
In delay there lies no plentie,
Then come kisse me sweet and twentie:
Youths a stuffe will not endure.
(Bantock, Bax, Bush, Castelnuovo-Tedesco, Chanler, Coates, Coleridge-Taylor, Dankworth, Davies, Dring, Dunhill, Fortner, Fricker, Gibbs, Hoiby, Horder, Howells, Jeffreys, Korngold, Lehmann, MacCunn, MacDowell, Morley, Parry, Quilter, Somervell, Sullivan, Taubert, Vaughan Williams, Warlock)
Feste
Come away, come away death,
And in sad cypresse let me be laide.
Fye away, fie away1 breath,
I am slaine by a faire cruell maide:
My shrowd of white, stuck all with Ew, O prepare it.
My part of death no one so true did share it.
Not a flower, not a flower sweete
On my blacke coffin, let there be strewne:
Not a friend, not a friend greet2
My poore corpes3, where my bones shall be throwne:
A thousand thousand sighes to saue, lay me ô where
Sad true louer neuer find my graue, to weepe there.
(Argento, Arne, Bantock, Blake, Borg, Brahms, Brian, Bush, Castelnuovo-Tedesco, Chausson, Cornelius, Dankworth, Davies, Dring, Dunhill, Finzi, Fortner, Gurney, Heise, Henschel, Hoiby, Holst, Killmayer, Korngold, Leguerney, Loewe, Maconchy, Moeran, Sibelius, Stanford, Vaughan Williams)
Feste
When that I was and a little tine boy,
with hey, ho, the winde and the raine:
A foolish thing was but a toy1,
for the raine it raineth euery day.
But when I came to mans estate,
with hey ho, the winde and the raine:
Gainst Knaues and Theeues men shut their gate,
for the raine it raineth euery day.
But when I came alas to wiue,
with hey ho, the winde and the raine:
By swaggering could I neuer thriue,
for the raine it raineth euery day.
[But when I came vnto my beds,
with hey ho, the winde and the raine:
With tospottes2 still had drunken heades,
for the raine it raineth euery day.]
A great while ago the world begon,
hey ho, the winde and the raine:
But that’s all one, our Play is done,
and wee’l striue to please you euery day.
(Blake, Bush, Castelnuovo-Tedesco, Dankworth, Davies, Dunhill, Gibbs, Gurney, Heise, Hoiby, Horder, Jeffreys, Killmayer, Korngold, Maconchy, Schumann, Sibelius, Stanford, Sviridov)
Horovitz writes in the Composer’s Note that accompanies the score: ‘The composer has selected the words from the speeches of Lady Macbeth. This selection is intended to portray the development of this character, from early aspirations to grandeur, to later power and finally to guilt and madness. The implication is that the scena begins after Lady Macbeth has read the report of Macbeth’s victory at the start of the play.’
Glamys thou art, and Cawdor, and shalt be
What thou art promis’d: yet doe I feare thy Nature,
It is too full o’th’ Milke of humane kindnesse,
To catch the neerest way. Thou would’st be great,
Art not without Ambition, but without
The illnesse1 should attend it. What thou would’st highly,
That would’st thou holily: would’st not play false,
And yet would’st wrongly winne. […]
High thee hither,
That I may powre my Spirits in thine Eare,
And chastise with the valour of my Tongue
All that impeides thee from the Golden Round,
Which Fate and Metaphysicall2 ayde doth seeme
To haue thee crown’d withall. […]
Great Glamys, worthy Cawdor,
Greater then both, by the all-haile hereafter,
Thy Letters haue transported me beyond
This ignorant present, and I feele now
The future in the instant.
He is about it, the Doores are open:
And the surfeted Groomes doe mock their charge
With Snores. I haue drugg’d their Possets3,
That Death and Nature doe contend about them,
Whether they liue, or dye. […]
I lay’d their Daggers ready,
He could not misse ’em. Had he not resembled
My Father as he slept, I had don’t. […]
Why did you bring these Daggers from the place?
They must lye there: goe carry them, and smeare
The sleepie Groomes with blood. […]
Infirme of purpose:
Giue me the Daggers: the sleeping, and the dead,
Are but as Pictures: ’tis the Eye of Child-hood,
That feares a painted Deuill. If he doe bleed,
Ile guild the Faces of the Groomes withall,
For it must seeme their Guilt. […]
Out damned spot: out I say. One: Two:4 Why then ’tis time to doo’t: Hell is murky. Fye, my Lord, fie, a Souldier, and affear’d? what need we feare? who knowes it, when none can call our powre to accompt: […] No more o’that my Lord, no more o’that: you marre all with this starting. […]
Heere’s the smell of the blood still: all the perfumes of Arabia will not sweeten this little hand. Oh, oh, oh […]
Wash your hands, put on your Night-Gowne: looke not so pale, I tell you yet againe Banquo’s buried; he cannot come out on’s graue. […]
To bed, to bed: there’s knocking at the gate: Come, come, […] giue me your hand: What’s done, cannot be vndone. To bed, to bed, to bed.
Come thou Monarch of the Vine,
Plumpie Bacchus, with pinke eyne1:
In thy Fattes our Cares be drown’d,
With thy Grapes our haires be Crown’d.
Cup vs till the world go round,
Cup vs till the world go round.
Hearke, hearke, the Larke at Heauens gate sings,
and Phœbus gins arise,
His Steeds to water at those Springs
on chalic’d Flowres that lyes:
And winking Mary-buds1 begin to ope their Golden eyes
With euery thing that pretty is, my Lady sweet arise:
Arise, arise.
(Castelnuovo-Tedesco, Hiller, Killmayer, Kilpinen, Marzials, Reichardt, C. Scott)
Guiderius
Feare no more the heate o’th’Sun,
Nor the furious Winters rages,
Thou thy worldly task hast don,
Home art gon, and tane thy wages.
Golden Lads, and Girles all must,
As Chimney-Sweepers come to dust.
Arviragus
Feare no more the frowne o’th’Great,
Thou art past the Tirants stroake,
Care no more to cloath and eate,
To thee the Reede is as the Oake:
The Scepter, Learning, Physicke must,
All follow this and come to dust.
Guiderius
Feare no more the Lightning flash.
Arviragus
Nor th’all-dreaded Thunderstone1.
Guiderius
Feare not Slander, Censure rash.
Arviragus
Thou hast finish’d Ioy and mone.
Both
All Louers young, all Louers must,
Consigne2 to thee and come to dust.
Guiderius
No Exorciser3 harme thee,
Nor no witch-craft charme thee.
Guiderius
Ghost vnlaid forbeare thee,
Arviragus
Nothing ill come neere thee.
Both
Quiet consumation haue,
And renowned be thy graue.4
(Arne, Blake, Brian, Castelnuovo-Tedesco, Dankworth, Davies, Fortner, Gardiner, Gibbs, Horder, Howells, Lambert, Marzials, Mathias, Parry, Quilter, Vaughan Williams)
Autolicus
When Daffadils begin to peere,
With heigh the Doxy1 ouer the dale,
Why then comes in the sweet o’the yeere,
For the red blood raigns in ye winters pale.
The white sheete bleaching on the hedge,
With hey the sweet birds, O how they sing:
Doth set my pugging2 tooth an edge,
For a quart of Ale is a dish for a King.
The Larke, that tirra Lyra chaunts,
With heigh, the Thrush and the Iay:
Are Summer songs for me and my Aunts3
While we lye tumbling in the hay.
(Boyce, Bush, Castelnuovo-Tedesco, Ireland, Moeran, Warlock)
Prospero
The Clowd-capt Towres, the gorgeous Pallaces,
The solemne Temples, the great Globe it selfe,
Yea, all which it inherit1, shall dissolue,
And like this insubstantiall Pageant faded
Leaue not a racke2 behinde: we are such stuffe
As dreames are made on; and our little life
Is rounded with a sleepe.
Ariel
Come vnto these yellow sands,
and then take hands:
Curtsied when you haue, and kist
the wilde waues whist:
Foote it featly heere, and there, and sweet Sprights beare
the burthen1,
Harke, harke, bowgh wawgh: the watch-Dogges barke,
bowgh-wawgh.
Hark, hark, I heare, the straine of strutting Chanticlere
cry cockadidle-dowe.
(Arnold, Bantock, Beach, Castelnuovo-Tedesco, Dove, Dunhill, Hold, Johnson, Martin, Nystroem, Quilter, Rawsthorne)
Ariel
Full fadom fiue thy Father lies,
Of his bones are Corrall made:
Those are pearles that were his eies,
Nothing of him that doth fade,
But doth suffer a Sea-change
Into something rich, & strange:1
Sea-Nimphs hourly ring his knell:
ding-dong.
Harke now I heare them, ding-dong bell.
(Arnold, Bantock, Bennett, Birtwistle, Brian, Bush, Castelnuovo-Tedesco, Dove, Dunhill, Gurney, Hold, Honegger, Howells, Ireland, Jeffreys, Johnson, Killmayer, Mathias, Mellers, Parry, Quilter, Stravinsky, Vaughan Williams, Williamson)
Ariel
Where the Bee sucks, there suck I,
In a Cowslips bell, I lie,
There I cowch when Owles doe crie,
after Sommer merrily.
Merrily, merrily, shall I liue now,
Vnder the blossom that hangs on the Bow.
(Arne, Bantock, Castelnuovo-Tedesco, Dove, Dunhill, Hold, Humfrey, Jeffreys, Johnson, Killmayer, Martin, Moeran, Nystroem, Quilter)
Shakespeare’s sonnets are divided into two parts. It’s usually claimed that 1–126 address a beautiful young man, traditionally known as the ‘fair youth’, with whom the poet is infatuated – but many of the poems are not gender specific. Sonnets 127–54 address a lady (traditionally known as the ‘dark lady’) who has been unfaithful to the poet. It is not certain that Shakespeare ever meant the Sonnets to be published, but they eventually appeared in print on 20 May 1609 in a quarto volume called Shake-Speares Sonnets, Neuer Before Imprinted. The publisher was Thomas Thorpe. All 154 Sonnets have been set to music: see the astonishing bibliographical achievement of Bryan N. S. Gooch and David Thatcher (OUP, 1991).
My mistres eyes are nothing like the Sunne,
Currall is farre more red, then her lips red,
If snow be white, why then her brests are dun1:
If haires be wiers, black wiers grow on her head:
I haue seene Roses damaskt2, red and white,
But no such Roses see I in her cheekes,
And in some perfumes is there more delight,
Then in the breath that from my Mistres reekes3.
I loue to heare her speake, yet well I know,
That Musicke hath a farre more pleasing sound:
I graunt I neuer saw a goddesse goe4,
My Mistres when shee walkes treads on the ground.
And yet by heauen I thinke my loue as rare,
As any she beli’d with false compare.5
When most I winke1 then doe mine eyes best see,
For all the day they view things vnrespected,
But when I sleepe, in dreames they looke on thee,
And darkely bright, are bright in darke directed.
Then thou whose shaddow shaddowes doth make bright,
How would thy shadowes forme, forme happy show,
To the cleere day with thy much cleerer light,
When to vn-seeing eyes thy shade shines so?
How would (I say) mine eyes be blessed made,
By looking on thee in the liuing day?
When in dead night their faire imperfect shade,
Through heauy sleepe on sightlesse eyes doth stay?
All dayes are nights to see till I see thee,
And nights bright daies when dreams do shew thee me.