Follow Your Saint

FOLLOW your saint, follow with accents sweet!

Haste you, sad notes, fall at her flying feet!

There, wrapt in cloud of sorrow, pity move,

And tell the ravisher of my soul I perish for her love:

But if she scorns my never-ceasing pain,

Then burst with sighing in her sight, and ne'er return again!



All that I sung still to her praise did tend;

Still she was first, still she my songs did end;

Yet she my love and music both doth fly,

The music that her echo is and beauty's sympathy:

Then let my notes pursue her scornful flight!

It shall suffive that they were breathed and died for her delight.

Thoms Campion

  Integer Vitae

[Integer Vitae = undivided, upright, blameless in life - from Horace 1.22: "Integer vitae scelerisque purus" - The man who is honest and pure in life... --Steve]

THE man of life upright,

   Whose guiltless heart is free

From all dishonest deeds,

   Or thought of vanity;



The man whose silent days

   In harmless joys are spent,

Wgom hopes cannot delude,

   Nor sorrow discontent;



That man needs neither towers

   Nor armour for defence,

No secret vaults to fly

   From thunder's violence:



He only can behold

   With unaffrighted eyes

The horrors of the deep

   And terrors of the skies.



Thus, scorning all the cares

   That fate or fortune brings,

He makes the heaven his book,

   His wisdom heavenly things;



Good thoughts his only friends,

   His wealth a well-spent age,

The earth his sober inn

   And quiet pilgrimage.

Thoms Campion

  Turn All Thy Thoughts to Eyes

TURN all thy thoughts to eyes,

Turn al thy hairs to ears,

Change all thy friends to spies

And all thy joys to fears:

True love will yet be free

In spite of jealousy.



Turn darkness into day,

Conjectures into truth,

Believe what th' envious say,

Let age interpret youth:

True love will yet be free

In spite of jealousy.



Wrest every word and look,

Rack every hidden thought,

Or fish with golden hook;

True love cannot be caught:

For that will still be free

In spite of jealousy.

Thoms Campion