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The Works of Thomas Campion

Complete Songs, Masques, and Treatises with a Selection of the Latin Verse: Edited with an introduction and notes by Walter R. Davis

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181

XIV.

[Beauty is but a painted hell]

Beauty is but a painted hell:
Aye me, aye me,
Shee wounds them that admire it,
Shee kils them that desire it.
Give her pride but fuell,
No fire is more cruell.
Pittie from ev'ry heart is fled,
Aye me, aye me;
Since false desire could borrow
Teares of dissembled sorrow,
Constant vowes turne truthlesse,
Love cruell, Beauty ruthlesse.
Sorrow can laugh, and Fury sing,
Aye me, aye me;
My raving griefes discover
I liv'd too true a lover:
The first step to madnesse
Is the excesse of sadnesse.