What I wake up to

Pardon the egghead vocab :-)

Always been a sucker for love songs.But honestly, this song holds a special meaning for me, in times as these, when every song on air stinks of love and hope. We so love to kid ourselves with false hopes.This one bridges that chasm of despair, with it's innocence.

Came across this gem of a lyric, quite by chance. Composed by an anonymous Elizabethan gentleman(or knave or spymaster or essayist or glass grinder or chambermaid, who knows) and set to music by John Dowland.

My favorite fantasy is to recreate some moments of his life just after he's come up with the song. A close guess would be- He'd be so amused with himself, that he'd forget himself, and the next moment, drown his sorrows in a pint of sickly yellow Elizabethan beer, smash to death a fly with his coarse palm, yell his heart out, lose a few teeth in a brawl with the chairs and the glasses, mumble some Greek, invent a few abuse words, and wish he'd never loved. But that sounds melodramatic. It could be a nasty schoolboy who'd fallen for his chambermaid, and while poring over some books he was forbidden to read, a folio of Shakespeare's bawd lyrics...Hell!

All the song needs is a lute or viol, a sweet mezzo voice, and of course, a muse. Since I have none(ahem,ahem), I get by with a '03 version by "The Dowlands", which I have set as my alarm clock tune. And rightly so, my neighbors get up before I do.

John Dowland's music animates the song, brings it to life, adds strains of sweet despair to the haunting lyric. Who knows? Maybe Shakespeare lent him a hand!

Here's the song.

"Awake, sweet love! Thou art return'd,
My heart, which long in absence mourn'd,
Lives now in perfect joy.
Let love, which never absent dies,
Now live forever in her eyes,
Whence came my first annoy.

Only herself hath seemed fair,
She only I could love,
She only drove me to despair,
When she unkind did prove.
Despair did make me wish to die,
That I my griefs might end,
She only which did make me fly,
My state may now amend.

If she esteem thee, now aught worth,
She will not grieve thy love henceforth,
Which so despair hath prov'd.
Despair hath proved now in me,
That love will not inconstant be,
Though long in vain I lov'd.

If she at last reward thy love,
And all thy harm repair,
Thy happiness will sweeter prove,
Rais'd up from deep despair.
And if that now thou welcome be
When though with her dost meet,
She, all the while, but play'd with thee,
To make thy joys more sweet."