LiederNet logo

CONTENTS

×
  • Home | Introduction
  • Composers (20,107)
  • Text Authors (19,481)
  • 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 Thomas Nashe (1567 - 1601)

Would I could bark the sun out of the...
Language: English 
Would I could bark the sun out of the sky;
Turn Moon and stars to frozen Meteors;
And make the Ocean a dry land of Ice;
With tempest of my breath turn up high trees;
On mountains heap up second mounts of snow,
Which, melted into water, might fall down,
As fell the deluge on the former world.
I hate the air, the fire, the Spring, the year,
And whatsoe'er brings mankind any good.
O that my looks were lightning to blast fruits! ... 
Would I with thunder presently might die,
So I might speak in thunder, to slay men.
Earth, if I cannot injure thee enough,
I'll bite thee with my teeth, I'll scratch thee thus;
I'll beat down the partition with my heels,
Which, as a mud-vault, severs hell and thee.
Spirits, come up; 'tis I that knock for you,
One that envies the world far more than you;
Come up in millions; millions are too few
To execute the malice I intend.

About the headline (FAQ)

Text Authorship:

  • by Thomas Nashe (1567 - 1601), no title, appears in Summer's Last Will and Testament [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 David Rowland (b. 1939), "Would I could bark the sun", 1981, from Nashe Songs, no. 1 [sung text not yet checked]

Researcher for this text: Emily Ezust [Administrator]

This text was added to the website: 2009-02-08
Line count: 20
Word count: 164

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