|
|
Thomas Campion (1567-1620)
from The Fourth Booke of Ayres
VII.
There is a Garden in her face,
Where Roses and white Lillies grow;
A heav'nly paradice is that place,
Wherein all pleasant fruits doe flow.
There Cherries grow, which none may buy
Till Cherry ripe themselves doe cry.
Those Cherries fayrely doe enclose
Of Orient Pearle a double row,
Which when her lovely laughter showes,
They look like Rose-buds fill'd with snow.
Yet them nor Peere nor Prince can buy,
Till Cherry ripe themselves doe cry.
Her Eyes like Angels watch them still;
Her Browes like bended bowes doe stand,
Threatning with piercing frownes to kill
All that attempt with eye or hand
Those sacred Cherries to come nigh,
Till Cherry ripe themselves doe cry.
The above poem is often entitled by its first line. It appeared,
along with accompanying music, in Campion's The Third and Fourth Booke
of Ayeres in 1617. It had appeared previously
in 1605 in Robert Jones' Ultimum Vale and in 1606 in
Richard Alison's An Howres Recreation in Musicke.
The text and music from the Fourthe Booke can be found in:
Campion, Thomas. The Works of Thomas Campion; Complete Songs,
Masques, and Treatises with a Selection of the Latin Verse. Walter
R. Davis, ed. Garden City, NY: Doubleday & Company, Inc., 1967.
The text can also be found in:
Ferguson, Margaret, Mary Jo Salter, and Jon Stallworthy, eds. The Norton Anthology of Poetry
(Fourth Edition). New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 1996.
|