by Anonymous / Unidentified Author

Come away, come sweet love
Language: English 
Come away, come sweet love,
The golden morning breaks.
All the earth, all the air
of love and pleasure speaks:
Teach thine arms to embrace,
And sweet rosy lips to kiss,
And mix our souls in mutual bliss,
Eyes were made for beauty's grace,
Viewing, rueing love's long pain
Procur'd by beauty's rude disdain.

Come away, come sweet love,
The golden morning wastes,
While the sun from his sphere
his fiery arrows casts,
Making all the shadows fly,
Playing, Staying in the grove
To entertain the stealth of love.
Thither, sweet love, let us hie,
Flying, dying in desire
Wing'd with sweet hopes and heav'nly fire.

Come away, come sweet love,
Do not in vain adorn 
Beauty's grace, that should rise
like to the naked morn.
Lilies on the riverside
And the fair Cyprian flow'rs newblown
Desire no beauties but their own,
Ornament is nurse of pride,
Pleasure, measure love's delight.
Haste then, sweet love, our wished flight!

Note: the second stanza was not in the original. It was added in England's Helicon, according to Lyrics from the Song-Books of the Elizabethan Age, ed. by A. H. Bullen, London, John C. Nimmo, 1887, p. 14.


Text Authorship:

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


Researcher for this text: Emily Ezust [Administrator]

This text was added to the website between May 1995 and September 2003.
Line count: 30
Word count: 158