Can she excuse my wrongs with Virtue's cloak?
Shall I call her good when she proves unkind?
Are those clear fires which vanish into smoke?
Must I praise the leaves where no fruit I find?
No no: where shadows do for bodies stand,
Thou may'st be abus'd if thy sight be dim.
Cold love is like to words written on sand,
Or to bubbles which on the water swim.
Wilt thou be thus abused still,
Seeing that she will right thee never?
If thou canst not o'ercome her will
The love will be thus fruitless ever.
Was I so base, that I might not aspire
Unto those high joys which she holds from me?
As they are high, so high is my desire:
If she this deny, what can granted be?
If she will yeld to that which reason is,
It is Reason's will that Love should be just.
Dear make me happy still be granting this,
Or cut off delays if that die I must.
Better a thousand times to die,
Than for to live thus still tormented:
Dear, but remember it was I
Who for thy sake did die contended
- :
- John Dowland The Collected Works (The Consort of Musicke,...
- Faire, Sweet & Cruell: Elizabethan Songs
- Lute Songs
- Lute Songs, Lute Solos
- Ayres & Lute-Lessons (Deller Consort feat. conductor:...
- Classic FM Summer Guitar
- Flow My Tears and Other Lute Songs (feat. counter-tenor:...
- Consort Music and Songs (Rose Consort of Viols feat....
- The Essential Emma Kirkby
- English Folksongs & Lute Songs (Andreas Scholl feat....
- Antiquities (viola: Nobuko Imai, accordion: Mie Miki)
- Lute Songs, Lute Solos (Alfred Deller feat. lute: Robert...
- English Songs: Renaissance to Baroque
- Early Music
- The Complete Vanguard Recordings, Volume 1: Folk Songs...
- Pleasures of Their Company
- Not just Dowland
- Beauty of the Baroque
- Australian InterVarsity Choral Festivals, The First 50 Years
- The Dark Is My Delight and Other 16th-Century Lute Songs