Two Elizabethan Songs , opus 44

by Cecil Armstrong Gibbs (1889 - 1960)

1. Love is a sickness  [sung text not yet checked]

Language: English 
Love is a sickness full of woes,
  All remedies refusing;
A plant that [with most]1 cutting grows,
  Most barren with best using,
      Why so?

More we enjoy it, more it dies;
  If not enjoy'd, it sighing cries --
      Heigh ho!

Love is a torment of the mind,
  A tempest everlasting;
And Jove hath made [it of]2 a kind
  Not well, nor full, nor fasting.
      Why so?

More we enjoy it, more it dies;
  If not enjoy'd, it sighing cries --
      Heigh ho!

Text Authorship:

See other settings of this text.

Available translations, adaptations or excerpts, and transliterations (if applicable):

View text without footnotes
1 Parry: "most with"
2 Ireland, Moeran, Raynor: "of it"

2. In youth is pleasure  [sung text not yet checked]

Language: English 
In a herber grene a sleep where as I lay, 
The byrdes sang swete in y middes of the day,
I dreamed fast of myrth and play,
In youth is plesure, in youth is pleasure.

Me thought I walked stil to and fro, 
And from her company I could not go,
But when I waked it was not so,
In youth is plesure, in youth is plesure.

Therfore my hart is surely pyght
Of her alone to have a sight.
Which is my joy and hartes delyght,
In youth is plesure, in youth is pleasure. Finis.

Text Authorship:

See other settings of this text.

View text without footnotes

Note for stanza 3, line 1: "pyght" or "pight" is an old past participle of "pitch" and means "resolved, set upon, fixed, or determined". Holst's use of "plight" may be a typo.

Modernized form of text used by Holst, Moeran, Warlock: 

In [an arbour green asleep whereas]1 I lay
The birds sang sweet in the [middis]2 of the day:
I dreamed fast of mirth and play;
In youth is pleasure.

Methought I walked still to and fro,
And from her company I could not go,
But when I waked it was not so.
In youth is pleasure

Therefore my heart is surely [pyght]3
Of her alone to have a sight
Which is my joy and heart's delight.
In youth is pleasure.

1 Holst: "arbour green asleep"
2 Holst: "middle"; Moeran: "middes"
3 Holst: "plight"