"There Is a Garden in Her Face'

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.