Featured Poem: Now Winter Nights Enlarge by Thomas Campion
Written by The Reader, 27th November 2016
This week's Featured Poem comes from Thomas Campion and captures that wintery atmosphere that's settled in over recent weeks, Now Winter Nights Enlarge.
A wintry poem for a wintry week.
Thomas Campion was an English composer, poet, and physician. He wrote over a hundred lute songs, masques for dancing, and an authoritative technical treatise on music. Today we look at his poem Now Winter Nights Enlarge:
Now Winter Nights Enlarge
Now winter nights enlarge
The number of their hours;
And clouds their storms discharge
Upon the airy towers.
Let now the chimneys blaze
And cups o’erflow with wine,
Let well-turned words amaze
With harmony divine.
Now yellow waxen lights
Shall wait on honey love
While youthful revels, masques, and courtly sights
Sleep’s leaden spells remove.
This time doth well dispense
With lovers’ long discourse;
Much speech hath some defense,
Though beauty no remorse.
All do not all things well;
Some measures comely tread,
Some knotted riddles tell,
Some poems smoothly read.
The summer hath his joys,
And winter his delights;
Though love and all his pleasures are but toys,
They shorten tedious nights.
by Thomas Campion
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