LiederNet logo

CONTENTS

×
  • Home | Introduction
  • Composers (20,133)
  • Text Authors (19,544)
  • Go to a Random Text
  • What’s New
  • A Small Tour
  • FAQ & Links
  • Donors
  • DONATE

UTILITIES

  • Search Everything
  • Search by Surname
  • Search by Title or First Line
  • Search by Year
  • Search by Collection

CREDITS

  • Emily Ezust
  • Contributors (1,114)
  • Contact Information
  • Bibliography

  • Copyright Statement
  • Privacy Policy

Follow us on Facebook

by Henry Lawes (c1595 - 1662)

No constancy in Man   
Language: English 
Be gone, be gone thou perjur'd man, 
and never more return,
For know that thy Inconstancy
hath chang'd my Love to Scorn:
Thou hast awak'd me,
and I can see cleerly ther's no Truth in Man.

My Love to thee was chast and pure,
As is the Morning dew,
And 'twas alone like to endure,
Hadst thou not prov'd untrue;
But I'm awak'd, and now I can
See cleerly ther's no Truth in Man.

Thou mayst perhaps prevaile upon
Some other to believe thee,
And since thou canst love more then one,
Ne'r think that it shall grieve me;
for th' hast awak'd me, and I can
Sec cleerly ther's no Truth in Man.

By thy Apostasie I find
That Love is plac'd amiss,
And can't continue in the mind
Where Vertue wanting is:
I'm now resolv'd, and know there can
No constant Thought remain in Man.

Text Authorship:

  • by Henry Lawes (c1595 - 1662) [author's text not yet checked 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 Henry Lawes (c1595 - 1662), "No constancy in Man", from the collection Ayres and Dialogues, Book 1 [
     text verified 1 time
    ]

Researcher for this text: Emily Ezust [Administrator]

This text was added to the website: 2014-04-15
Line count: 24
Word count: 147

Gentle Reminder

This website began in 1995 as a personal project by Emily Ezust, who has been working on it full-time without a salary since 2008. Our research has never had any government or institutional funding, so if you found the information here useful, please consider making a donation. Your help is greatly appreciated!
–Emily Ezust, Founder

Donate

We use cookies for internal analytics and to earn much-needed advertising revenue. (Did you know you can help support us by turning off ad-blockers?) To learn more, see our Privacy Policy. To learn how to opt out of cookies, please visit this site.

I acknowledge the use of cookies

Contact
Copyright
Privacy

Copyright © 2025 The LiederNet Archive

Site redesign by Shawn Thuris