Thomas Campion

1567-1620. He was one of those jacks-of-all-trades, law student, ;physician, composer, and writer. He preferred Latin for poetic form. He has a sweet lyrical quality, even though his topic material is sometimes controversial - e.g., rape.

"My sweetest Lesbia"
Sextet of three couplets, iambic pentameter. The speaker urges the lover to "live and love" even though that might not be wise. A carpe diem sort of poem. Second stanza claims that those that war are the true fools, not those that love. Third stanza repeats the theme of death - people should celebrate after the speaker dies. Last two lines are confusing - does Lesbia die with him, or merely usher him into death?

"I care not for these ladies"
Balladic repetition - 10 lines per stanza, last four repeat. Resists noblewomen who demand so much wealth, turning instead to simple "kind Amaryllis, / The wanton country maid." Pun intended there. Trade of goods in second stanza - the speaker wants to receive goods, not have to give "golden showers." (Har.) Idyllic about Amaryllis. The last four lines repeat a story of seizure, refusal, and then relenting once "we come where comfort is." It's disturbing, as it suggests that he partly wants Amaryllis because she is easy to both love and to simply take.

"When to her lute Corinna sings"
Two sextets, couplet rhyme. Iambic tetrameter. Beautiful overflow at the end of the first stanza, "Ev'n with her sighs the strings do break," "Ev'n" evoking the overflow into mourning. Sympathetic reactions between player, music, and finally the listener, who is also the speaker, and perhaps seeking to impart a similar reaction by retelling it.

"Now winter nights enlarge"
ababcdcdefef, iambic trimeter with a pentameter skip at the penultimate lines of two 12-line stanzas. Unlike many poems that lament winter, this features the turning inward into pockets of warmth and human society. Talk, dally, dance, riddle, lyricize - "Though Love and all his pleasures are but toys, / They shorten tedious nights."

"There is a garden in her face"
ababcc, iambic tetrameter. Along with lyricizing the addressee's face, the poet also has the refrain, "Till 'Cherry ripe!' themselves do cry." Who are "themselves," the suitors judging the "fruit" to be done, or the maid herself, ready to become a woman? The ambiguity plays with the voice of the poet too - does he want to declare her ready? Does the London street vendor cry, ushered from her or their lips, empower her, sell her, or do something else entirely?

"Fain would I wed"
Fourteener - fourteen syllables, seven beats. In a young woman's voice. She longs to move, and seeks men to love and satisfy her, but she never is able to love for long. She will turn to a convent eventually, but wryly implies that first she will become a mother, just like her mother before her. Part cyclical, part unrestrained, the voice of the woman is not at all subdued as one might assume from his other prose. Not that this assumption is correct - one might imagine that this is now Campion's Amaryllis, given the additional dimension of choice. She, too, wants sex, but she changes her mind frequently about who tolove.