My Life’s Delight

By Thomas Campion 1567–1620 Thomas Campion

Come, O come, my life’s delight,

Let me not in languor pine!

Love loves no delay; thy sight,

The more enjoyed, the more divine:

O come, and take from me

The pain of being deprived of thee!

Thou all sweetness dost enclose,

Like a little world of bliss.

Beauty guards thy looks: the rose

In them pure and eternal is.

Come, then, and make thy flight

As swift to me, as heavenly light.

Biography

Thomas Campion's importance for nondramatic literature of the English Renaissance lies in the exceptional intimacy of the musical-poetic connection in his work. While other poets and musicians talked about the union of the two arts, only Campion produced complete songs wholly of his own composition, and only he wrote lyric poetry of enduring literary value whose very construction is deeply etched with the poet's care for its . . .

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