Know, Celia, since thou art so proud,	
  ’Twas I that gave thee thy renown;	
Thou hadst in the forgotten crowd	
  Of common beauties lived unknown,	
Had not my verse [extoll’d]1 thy name,
And with it [imp’d]2 the wings of Fame.	
 
That killing power is none of thine:	
  I gave it to thy voice and eyes;	
Thy sweets, thy graces, all are mine;	
  Thou art my star, shin’st in my skies;
Then dart not from thy borrowed sphere	
Lightning on him that fixed thee there.	
 
Tempt me with such affrights no more,	
  Lest what I made I uncreate;	
Let fools thy mystic forms adore,
  [I]3 know thee in thy mortal state:	
Wise poets, that wrapt Truth in tales,	
Knew her themselves through all her veils.	

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View original text (without footnotes)

Confirmed with English Poetry I: From Chaucer to Gray The Harvard Classics, 1909–14, Item 232.

Note provided by Iain Sneddon: "imped" is a falconry term referring to the insertion of new feathers to repair the broken fethers of a hawk's wing.

¹ Gideon, Lawes: "exhal'd"
² Gideon: "ympt"
³ Lawes: "Ile"

Text Authorship:

• by Thomas Carew (1595? - 1639?), "Know, Celia" [author's text checked 1 time against a primary source]

Musical settings (art songs, Lieder, mélodies, (etc.), choral pieces, and other vocal works set to this text), listed by composer (not necessarily exhaustive):

• by Miriam Gideon (1906 - 1996), "Know, Celia, since thou art so proud", 1987 [ high voice, flute, violin, violoncello ], from The shooting starres attend thee, no. 4 [sung text checked 1 time]
• by Henry Lawes (c1595 - 1662), "Know, Celia, since thou art so proud", published 1655 [ voice and continuo ], from The Second Book of Ayres, and Dialogues, no. 20, Confirmed with The Second Book of Ayres and Dialogues, for One, Two, and Three, by Henry Lawes, John Playford, London 1655, Page 18. [sung text checked 1 time]

Research team for this page: Emily Ezust [Administrator] , Iain Sneddon [Guest Editor]

This text was added to the website: 2008-10-21
Line count: 18
Word count: 127