When Thou Must Home To Shades Of Underground

When thou must home to shades of underground,
And there arrived, a new admirèd 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, Oh tell, how thou didst murther me.

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

Winter Nights Enlarge

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Thomas Campion, Simple Poetry

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English

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To ----

Hadst thou liv'd in days of old,
O what wonders had been told
Of thy lively countenance,
And thy humid eyes that dance
In the midst of their own brightness;
In the very fane of lightness.
Over which thine eyebrows, leaning,
Picture out each lovely meaning:
In a dainty bend they lie,
Like to streaks across the sky,
Or the feathers from a crow,
Fallen on a bed of snow.
Of thy dark hair that extends
Into many graceful bends:
As the leaves of Hellebore
Turn to whence they sprung before.
And behind each ample curl
Peeps the richness of a pearl.
Downward too flows many a tress
With a glossy waviness;
Full, and round like globes that rise
From the censer to the skies
Through sunny air. Add too, the sweetness
Of thy honied voice; the...

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Love And Madness

Hark! from the battlements of yonder tower
The solemn bell has tolled the midnight hour!
Roused from drear visions of distempered sleep,
Poor Broderick wakesin solitude to weep!

"Cease, Memory; cease (the friendless mourner cried)
To probe the bosom too severely tried!
Oh! ever cease, my pensive thoughts, to stray
Through tie bright fields of Fortune's better day,
When youthful Hope, the music of the mind,
Tuned all its charms, and Errington was kind!

Yet, can I cease, while glows this trembling    frame,
In sighs to speak thy melancholy name!
I hear thy spirit wail in every storm!
In midniglit shades I view thy passing form!
Pale as in that sad hour when doomed to feel!
Deep in thy perjured heart, the bloody steel!

Demons of Vengeance! ye, ...

Thomas Campbell

Thrice Toss Those Oaken Ashes In The Air

Thrice toss those oaken ashes in the air;
Thrice sit thou mute in this enchanted chair;
Then thrice three times tie up this true love's knot,
And murmur soft: "She will, or she will not."

Go burn those poisonous weeds in yon blue fire,
These screech-owl's feathers and this prickling briar,
This cypress gathered at a dead man's grave,
That all thy fears and cares an end may have.

Then come, you fairies, dance with me a round;
Melt her hard heart with your melodious sound.
In vain are all the charms I can devise;
She hath an art to break them with her eyes.

Thomas Campion

Specimen Of An Induction To A Poem

Lo! I must tell a tale of chivalry;
For large white plumes are dancing in mine eye.
Not like the formal crest of latter days:
But bending in a thousand graceful ways;
So graceful, that it seems no mortal hand,
Or een the touch of Archimagos wand,
Could charm them into such an attitude.
We must think rather, that in playful mood,
Some mountain breeze had turned its chief delight,
To show this wonder of its gentle might.
Lo! I must tell a tale of chivalry;
For while I muse, the lance points slantingly
Athwart the morning air: some lady sweet,
Who cannot feel for cold her tender feet,
From the worn top of some old battlement
Hails it with tears, her stout defender sent:
And from her own pure self no joy dissembling,
Wraps round her ample robe with happy tr...

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The Knight And The Friar. Part First.

In our Fifth Harry's reign, when 'twas the fashion
To thump the French, poor creatures! to excess;--
Tho' Britons, now a days, shew more compassion,
And thump them, certainly, a great deal less;--

In Harry's reign, when flush'd Lancastrian roses
Of York's pale blossoms had usurp'd the right;^[3]
As wine drives Nature out of drunkards' noses,
Till red, triumphantly, eclipses white;--
In Harry's reign--but let me to my song,
Or good king Harry's reign may seem too long.

SIR THOMAS ERPINGHAM, a gallant knight,
When this king Harry went to war, in France,
Girded a sword about his middle;
Resolving, very lustily, to fight,
And teach the Frenchmen how to dance,
Without a fiddle.

And wond'rous bold Sir Thomas prove'd in battle,
Perfor...

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The Voice Of The Thorn

I

When the thorn on the down
Quivers naked and cold,
And the mid-aged and old
Pace the path there to town,
In these words dry and drear
It seems to them sighing:
"O winter is trying
To sojourners here!"

II

When it stands fully tressed
On a hot summer day,
And the ewes there astray
Find its shade a sweet rest,
By the breath of the breeze
It inquires of each farer:
"Who would not be sharer
Of shadow with these?"

III

But by day or by night,
And in winter or summer,
Should I be the comer
Along that lone height,
In its voicing to me
Only one speech is spoken:
"Here once was nigh broken
A heart, and by thee."

Thomas Hardy