Thomas Campion was a classicist and lute-song composer who studied law and worked as a doctor. Like his more gifted contemporary, George Herbert, he was as much a musician as a poet and his poems are more to be enjoyed for their musicality than admired for their profundity. Read this:
“When to her
lute Corinna sings,
Her voice
revives the leaden strings,
And doth in
highest notes appear
As any
challenged echo clear;
But when she
doth of mourning speak,
Ev’n with
her sighs the strings do break.
“And as her
lute doth live or die,
Let by her
passion, so must I:
For when of
pleasure she doth sing,
My thoughts
enjoy a sudden spring,
But if she
doth of sorrow speak,
Ev’n from my
heart the strings do break.”
And then
listen to it set to music here. Campion’s lyrics are pure Mozartian – or Cole Porter-esque
-- pleasure. No need to fret over significance. This lyric begins with as
striking an image as I know:
There is a
Garden in her face,
Where Roses
and white Lillies grow ;
A heau’nly
paradice is that place,
Wherein all
pleasant fruits doe flow.
There
Cherries grow, which none may buy
Till Cherry
ripe themselues doe cry.
“Those
Cherries fayrely doe enclose
Of Orient
Pearle a double row;
Which when
her louely laughter showes,
They look
like Rose-buds fill’d with snow.
Yet them nor
Peere nor Prince can buy,
Till Cherry
ripe themselues 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 themselues doe cry.”
An anthologist
could assemble a sizable volume of “cherry” poems (Herrick, Christina Rosetti,
et al.), beginning with Campion’s and, of course, including A.E. Housman’s
contribution to the theme:
“Loveliest
of trees, the cherry now
Is hung with
bloom along the bough,
And stands
about the woodland ride
Wearing
white for Eastertide.
“Now, of my
threescore years and ten,
Twenty will
not come again,
And take
from seventy springs a score,
It only
leaves me fifty more.
“And since
to look at things in bloom
Fifty springs
are little room,
About the
woodlands I will go
To see the
cherry hung with snow.”
Thomas
Campion died in 1620 on this date, March 1, a noteworthy day in poetry. Robert
Lowell was born on this date in 1917; Howard Nemerov, 1920; Richard Wilbur,
1921. George Herbert died on this date in 1633 and Tristan Corbière in 1875.
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