Samuel Daniel (1562-1619). Song: 'Love is a sickness full of woes'. William Stanley Braithwaite, ed. 1907. The Book of Elizabethan Verse

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William Stanley Braithwaite, ed. The Book of Elizabethan Verse. 1907.

Song: ‘Love is a sickness full of woes’

By Samuel Daniel (1562–1619)


LOVE 1 is a sickness full of woes,
All remedies refusing;
A plant that with most cutting grows,
Most barren with best using.
Why so?	5
More we enjoy it, more it dies;
If not enjoy’d, it sighing cries,—
Heigh ho!

Love is a torment of the mind,
A tempest everlasting;	10
And Jove hath made it of a kind
Not well, nor full, nor fasting.
Why so?
More we enjoy it, more it dies;
If not enjoy’d, it sighing cries,—	15
Heigh ho!

Note 1. From Hymen’s Triumph, acted 1613–14. This “pastoral tragi-comedy” was performed at Somerset-House on the occasion of Lord Roxburgh’s marriage to Mistress Jane Drummond. Mr. Chamberlain’s comment is “solemn and dull.” [back]

CONTENTS · GLOSSARY · BIBLIOGRAPHIC RECORD

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