O how much do I love your solitariness!

You men that give false worship unto Love,
And seek that which you never shall obtain;
The endless work of Sisyphus you prove,
Whose end is this, to know you strive in vain.
Hope and Desire, which now your idols be,
You needs must lose, and feel Despair with me.
O sweet woods! the delight of solitariness!
O how much do I love your solitariness!

You woods, in you the fairest Nymphs have walked:
Nymphs at whose sights all hearts did yield to love.
You woods, in whom dear lovers oft have talked,
How do you now a place of mourning prove?
Wanstead! my Mistress saith this is the doom.
Thou art love's child-bed, nursery, and tomb.
O sweet woods! the delight of solitariness!
O how much do I love your solitariness!

From THOMAS CAMPION's _Two Books of Airs_ (circ. 1613).

Give Beauty all her right!
She's not to one form tied;
Each shape yields fair delight
Where her perfections bide:
Helen, I grant, might pleasing be,
And Ros'mond was as sweet as she.

Some the quick eye commends,
Some swelling[4] lips and red;
Pale looks have many friends,
Through sacred sweetness bred:
Meadows have flowers that pleasures move,
Though roses are the flowers of love.

Free beauty is not bound
To one unmoved clime;
She visits every ground
And favours every time.
Let the old loves with mine compare,
My sovereign is as sweet and fair.

[4] Old ed. "smelling."

From JOHN DOWLAND's _First Book of Songs or Airs_, 1597.

Go crystal tears! like to the morning showers,
And sweetly weep into thy lady's breast!
And as the dews revive the drooping flowers,
So let your drops of pity be addrest!
To quicken up the thoughts of my desert,
Which sleeps too sound whilst I from her depart.

Haste hapless sighs! and let your burning breath
Dissolve the ice of her indurate heart!
Whose frozen rigour, like forgetful Death,
Feels never any touch of my desert.
Yet sighs and tears to her I sacrifice
Both from a spotless heart and patient eyes.

From EGERTON MS., 2013. _The Verses were set to Music by Dr. John
Wilson._

Go, turn away those cruel eyes,
For they have quite undone me;
They used not so to tyrannize
When first those glances won me.

But 'ti