Come again: sweet love doth now invite (Anonymous, set by J. Dowland) (The Lied and Art Song Texts Page: Texts and Translations to Lieder, mélodies, canzoni, and other classical vocal music)


Come again:
Sweet love doth now invite, 
Thy graces that refrain,
To do me due delight,
To see, to hear, to touch, to kiss, to die,
With thee again in sweetest sympathy.

Come again
That I may cease to mourn,
Through thy unkind disdain:
For now left and forlorn,
I sit, I sigh, I weep, I faint, I die,
In deadly pain and endless misery.

All the day
That sun that lends me shine
By frowns doth cause me pine
And feeds me with delay:
Her smiles, my springs that make my joys to grow,
Her frowns, the winters of my woe.

All the night
My sleep is full of dreams,
My eyes are full of streams,
My heart takes no delight
To see the fruits and joys that some do find,
And mark the storms to me assigned,

Out, alas,
My faith is ever true,
Yet will she never rue,
Nor yield me any grace;
Her eyes of fire, her heart of flint is made,
Whom tears nor truth may once invade.

Gentle Love,
Draw forth thy wounding dart,
Thou canst not pierce her heart,
For I that to approve,
By sighs and tears more hot than are thy shafts,
Did tempt, while she for [mighty]¹ triumph laughs.

View text without footnotes
¹ added by Dowland

Input by Gerald Kirsch

Authorship

Anonymous/Unidentified Artist

^th

Musical settings (art songs, Lieder, mélodies, (etc.), choral pieces, and other vocal works set to this text), listed by composer (not necessarily exhaustive)

John Dowland (1562-1626)

Text added to the website between May 1995 and September 2003.

Notes about green, red, and white dots

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