Draw on, sweet Night, best friend unto those cares
That do arise from painful melancholy;
My life so ill through want of comfort fares,
That unto thee I consecrate it wholly.
Sweet Night, draw on; my griefs, when they be told
To shades and darkness, find some ease from paining.
And while thou all in silence dost enfold,
I then shall have best time for my complaining.
"A peculiar anthologic maze, an amusing literary chaos, a farrago of quotations, a mere olla podrida of quaintness, a pot pourri of pleasant delites, a florilegium of elegant extracts, a tangled fardel of old-world flowers of thought, a faggot of odd fancies, quips, facetiae, loosely tied" (Holbrook Jackson, Anatomy of Bibliomania) by a "laudator temporis acti," a "praiser of time past" (Horace, Ars Poetica 173).
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Wednesday, December 05, 2007
Draw On, Sweet Night
John Wilbye, Second Set of Madrigals (1609):