| William Stanley Braithwaite, ed. The Book of Elizabethan Verse. 1907. | | | | Sleep, Angry Beauty, Sleep | | By Thomas Campion (1567–1620) |
| | | SLEEP, 1 angry beauty, sleep, and fear not me! | |
| For who a sleeping lion dares provoke? | |
| It shall suffice me here to sit and see | |
| Those lips shut up that never kindly spoke: | |
| What sight can more content a lover’s mind | 5 |
| Than beauty seeming harmless, if not kind? | |
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| My words have charmed her, for secure she sleeps, | |
| Though guilty much of wrong done to my love; | |
| And in her slumber, see! she close-eyed weeps: | |
| Dreams often more than waking passions move. | 10 |
| Plead, Sleep, my cause, and make her soft like thee, | |
| That she in peace may wake and pity me. | |
| | | Note 1. From Campion’s Third Book of Airs, 1617. “Exquisite in its equally-balanced metrical flow.” (Palgrave.) [back] | | |
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