Rose-Cheeked Laura

Rose-cheeked Laura, come,
Sing thou smoothly with thy beauty's
Silent music, either other
Sweetly gracing.

Lovely forms do flow
From concert divinely framed;
Heav'n 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.

Thomas Campion

Thomas Campion was an English composer, poet, and physician, renowned for his lute songs, masques, and influential musical and literary theories. He published several collections of songs, both solo and in collaboration, and his work was characterized by its technical innovation and expressive depth. Besides music, he authored influential treatises on music theory and poetics, including 'A Book of Ayres' and 'Observations in the Art of English Poesy'. His works reflect the fusion of Renaissance music and literature.

Thomas Campion

The Garden

Thomas Campion, Simple Poetry

Thrice Toss Those Oaken Ashes In The Air

Thomas Campion, Simple Poetry

My Sweetest Lesbia

Thomas Campion, Simple Poetry

English

Suggested Poems

Explore a curated selection of verses that share themes, styles, and emotional resonance with the poem you've just read.

Beauty And Song.

Down in yon summer vale,
    Where the rill flows.
Thus said a Nightingale
    To his loved Rose:--
"Tho' rich the pleasures
"Of song's sweet measures,
"Vain were its melody,
"Rose, without thee."

Then from the green recess
    Of her night-bower,
Beaming with bashfulness,
    Spoke the bright flower:--
"Tho' morn should lend her
"Its sunniest splendor,
"What would the Rose be,
"Unsung by thee?"

Thus still let Song attend
    Woman's bright way;
Thus still let woman lend
    Light to the lay.
Like stars thro' heaven's sea
Floating in harmony
Beauty should glide along
Circled by Song.

Thomas Moore

A Madrigal

The lily-bells ring underground,
    Their music small I hear
When globes of dew that shine pearl round
    Hang in the cowslip's ear
And all the summer blooms and sprays
    Are sheathed from the sun,
And yet I feel in many ways
    Their living pulses run.

The crowning rose of summer time
    Lies folded on its stem,
Its bright urn holds no honey-wine,
    Its brow no diadem,
And yet my soul is inly thrilled,
    As if I stood anear
Some legal presence unrevealed,
    The queen of all the year.

Oh Rose, dear Rose! the mist and dew
    Uprising from the lake,
And sunshine glancing warmly through,
    Have kissed the flowers awake--
The orchard blooms are dropping balm,
    The tulip's gorgeous cup
More slender than a ...

Kate Seymour Maclean

Beautiful-Bosomed, O Night

I

Beautiful-bosomed, O Night, in thy noon
Move with majesty onward! soaring, as lightly
As a singer may soar the notes of an exquisite tune,
The stars and the moon
Through the clerestories high of the heaven, the firmament's halls:
Under whose sapphirine walls,
June, hesperian June,
Robed in divinity wanders.    Daily and nightly
The turquoise touch of her robe, that the violets star,
The silvery fall of her feet, that lilies are,
Fill the land with languorous light and perfume. -
Is it the melody mute of burgeoning leaf and of bloom?
The music of Nature, that silently shapes in the gloom
Immaterial hosts
Of spirits that have the flowers and leaves in their keep,
Whom I hear, whom I hear?
With their sighs of silver and pearl?
Invisible ghosts, ...

Madison Julius Cawein

Beautiful-Bosomed, O Night

I.

Beautiful-bosomed, O Night, in thy noon
Move with majesty onward! soaring, as lightly
As a singer may soar the notes of an exquisite tune,
The stars and the moon
Through the clerestories high of the heaven, the firmament's halls:
Under whose sapphirine walls,
June, hesperian June,
Robed in divinity wanders. Daily and nightly
The turquoise touch of her robe, that the violets star,
The silvery fall of her feet, that lilies are,
Fill the land with languorous light and perfume.
Is it the melody mute of burgeoning leaf and of bloom?
The music of Nature, that silently shapes in the gloom
Immaterial hosts
Of spirits that have the flowers and leaves in their keep,
Whom I hear, whom I hear?
With their sighs of silver and pearl?
Invisible ghosts,

Madison Julius Cawein

To Miss Susan Beckford.[1] On Her Singing.

I more than once have heard at night
    A song like those thy lip hath given,
And it was sung by shapes of light,
    Who looked and breathed, like thee, of heaven.

But this was all a dream of sleep.
    And I have said when morning shone:--
"Why should the night-witch, Fancy, keep
    "These wonders for herself alone?"

I knew not then that fate had lent
    Such tones to one of mortal birth;
I knew not then that Heaven had sent
    A voice, a form like thine on earth.

And yet, in all that flowery maze
    Through which my path of life has led,
When I have heard the sweetest lays
    From lips of rosiest lustre shed;

When I have felt the warbled word
    From Beauty's lip, in sweetness vying
With music's own melodious bird;

Thomas Moore

Sing--Sing--Music Was Given.

Sing--sing--Music was given,
    To brighten the gay, and kindle the loving;
Souls here, like planets in Heaven,
    By harmony's laws alone are kept moving.
Beauty may boast of her eyes and her cheeks,
    But Love from the lips his true archery wings;
And she, who but feathers the dart when she speaks,
    At once sends it home to the heart when she sings.
    Then sing--sing--Music was given,
        To brighten the gay, and kindle the loving;
    Souls here, like planets in Heaven,
        By harmony's laws alone are kept moving.

When Love, rocked by his mother,
    Lay sleeping as calm as slumber could make him,
"Hush, hush," said Venus, "no other
    "Sweet voice but his own is worthy to wake him."
Dreaming of music he slumbered the while
    ...

Thomas Moore