Quote#Love
My sweetest Lesbia, let us live and love
Quote byThomas Campion · 1567–1620
Commonly attributed — not confirmed in an authoritative edition. Cited on Wikiquote to: A Book of Ayres (1601), My Sweetest Lesbia, l. 1.
English (original)
My sweetest Lesbia, let us live and love, And though the sager sort our deeds reprove, Let us not weigh them: Heav'n's great lamps do dive Into their west, and straight again revive, But soon as once set is our little light, Then must we sleep one ever-during night.
— Thomas Campion
More from Thomas Campion
Follow your Saint, follow with accents sweet; Haste you, sad notes, fall at her flying feet.
Follow thy fair sun, unhappy shadow, Though thou be black as night, And she made all of light, Yet follow thy fair sun, unhappy shadow.
When to her lute Corinna sings, Her voice revives the leaden strings, And both in highest notes appear, As any challeng'd echo clear. But when she doth of mourning speak, Ev’n with her sighs the strings do break.
Who, when we court and kiss, She cries, "Forsooth, let go!" But when we come where comfort is, She never will say no.
I care not for these ladies, That must be wooed and prayed; Give me kind Amaryllis, The wanton country maid. Nature art disdaineth; Her beauty is her own.
The man of life upright, Whose guiltless heart is free From all dishonest deeds Or thought of vanity.