Dowland’s melancholy tune was included in his “First Booke of Songes and Ayers” in 1597. The text is anonymous. Like many of the pieces from this collection, it was printed so as to be performed by lute with soloist, or by a group of madrigal singers.

Text

Come again! sweet love doth now invite
Thy graces that refrain
To do me due delight,
To see, to hear, to touch, to kiss, to die,
With thee again in sweetest sympathy.

Come again! that I may cease to mourn
Through thy unkind disdain;
For now left and forlorn
I sit, I sigh, I weep, I faint, I die
In deadly pain and endless misery.

All the day the sun that lends me shine
By frowns doth cause me pine
And feeds me with delay;
Her smiles, my springs that makes my joy to grow,
Her frowns the winter of my woe.

All the night my sleeps are full of dreams,
My eyes are full of streams.
My heart takes no delight
To see the fruits and joys that some do find
And mark the stormes are me assign’d.

But alas, my faith is ever true,
Yet will she never rue
Nor yield me any grace;
Her Eyes of fire, her heart of flint is made,
Whom tears nor truth may once invade.

Gentle Love, draw forth thy wounding dart,
Thou canst not pierce her heart;
For I, that do approve
By sighs and tears more hot than are thy shafts
Do tempt while she for triumphs laughs.