Now winter nights enlarge
Now winter nights enlarge
The number of their hours,
And clouds their storms discharge
Upon the airy towers.
Let now the chimneys blaze,
And cups o’erflow with wine;
Let well-tuned words amaze
With harmony divine.
Now yellow waxen lights
Shall wait on honey love,
While youthful revels, masques, and courtly sights
Sleep’s leaden spells remove.
This time doth well dispense
With lovers’ long discourse;
Much speech hath some defence,
Though beauty no remorse.
All do not all things well;
Some measures comely tread,
Some knotted riddles tell,
Some poems smoothly read.
The summer hath his joys
And winter his delights;
Though love and all his pleasures are but toys,
They shorten tedious nights.
by Thomas Campion (1567-1620).
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In the Dark 
January 21, 2012 at 10:12 pm
What a lovely poem. Thomas Campion was a musician as well; did he have a tune this was set to?
January 21, 2012 at 11:03 pm
I’m glad you like it. I also think it’s lovely. I posted it because I’ve been reading a collection of his verse, but I don’t know anything about Campion’s music and am not aware if he set this as a song.
January 21, 2012 at 11:33 pm
I doubt very much they would be ‘his’ music; poets often wrote lyrics to previously written (or even well known) tunes of the day. Robert Burns did this extensively.
Campion actually has some works online (I bet he’d be thrilled):
http://www.luminarium.org/renlit/campbib.htm
In his note to the reader, he writes,
“These Ayres were for the most part framed at first for one voyce with the Lute, or Violl, but upon occasion, they have since beene filled with more parts, which who so please may vse, who like not may leaue.”
The site has some audio files but I don’t know if they are the ones he used or new ones, and I can’t seem to play them anyway.
January 22, 2012 at 6:14 pm
Well I never. Here you are:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5Cio2AwGnvk
January 23, 2012 at 7:19 pm
Well found!
January 21, 2012 at 10:20 pm
By coincidence you seem to have posted this just as the shrinking of winter nights begins to become perceptible. (Actually, I always feel the days are already getting perceptibly longer by the beginning of January, but this is mostly down to the fact that I take more notice of the time of sunset than sunrise, and sunset starts getting later right from about two weeks before the solstice.)
January 21, 2012 at 11:05 pm
I just came across it by accident as I was reading a book of Campion’s poetry (see above), but I am well aware that it isn’t quite right from an astronomical point of view to post it at this time…
..which reminds me of a very lengthy coffee-time discussion we had about why the shortest day isn’t necessarily the same as either the latest sunrise or the earliest sunset!