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Thomas Campion
1567 - 1620

1     Follow your saint, follow with accents sweet;
2     Haste you, sad notes, fall at her flying feet.
3     There, wrapp'd in cloud of sorrow, pity move,
4     And tell the ravisher of my soul I perish for her love:
5     But if she scorns my never-ceasing pain,
6     Then burst with sighing in her sight and ne'er return again.

7     All that I sung still to her praise did tend,
8     Still she was first; still she my songs did end;
9     Yet she my love and music both doth fly,
10   The music that her echo is and beauty's sympathy.
11   Then let my notes pursue her scornful flight:
12   It shall suffice that they were breath'd and died for her delight.

Thrice toss these oaken ashes in the air;
Thrice sit thou mute in this enchantment chair:
Then trice three times tie up this true love’s knot,
And murmur soft she will, or she will not.

Go burn these pois’nous weeds in your 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, 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.

© 2000 Elena and Yacov Feldman