William Stanley Braithwaite, ed. The Book of Elizabethan Verse. 1907. If Music and Sweet Poetry Agree By Richard Barnfield (1574–1627)
IF 1 music and sweet poetry agree, As they must needs, the sister and the brother, Then must the love be great ’twixt thee and me, Because thou lov’st the one and I the other. Dowland to thee is dear, whose heavenly touch 5 Upon the lute doth ravish human sense; Spenser to me, whose deep conceit is such, As passing all conceit, needs no defence. Thou lov’st to hear the sweet melodious sound That Phœbus’ lute, the queen of music, makes; 10 And I in deep delight am chiefly drowned Whenas himself to singing he betakes: One god is god of both, as poets feign, One knight loves both, and both in thee remain.
Note 1. The Passionate Pilgrim, 1599. It appeared in Barnfield’s Poems in Divers Humors, 1598. See note to No. 41 . [back ]
