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The Second Booke of Songs or Ayres

of 2. 4. and 5. parts: With Tableture for the Lute or Orpherian, with the Violl de Gamba. Composed by Iohn Dovvland ... Also an excelent lesson for the Lute and Base Viol, called Dowlands adew [by John Dowland]

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X.

[O sweet woods the delight of solitarinesse]

To Maister Hugh Holland.
O sweet woods the delight of solitarinesse,
O how much doe I loue your solitarinesse.
From fames desire, from loues delight retir'd,
In these sad groues an Hermits life I led,
And those false pleasures which I once admir'd,
With sad remembrance of my fall, I dread,
To birds, to trees, to earth, impart I this,
For shee lesse secret, and as sencelesse is.
Experience which repentance onely brings,
Doth bid mee now my hart from loue estrange,
Loue is disdained when it doth looke at Kings,
And loue loe placed base and apt to change:
Ther power doth take from him his liberty,
Hir want of worth makes him in cradell die.
O sweet woods, &c.
O how much, &c.
You men that giue false worship vnto Loue,
And seeke that which you neuer shall obtaine,
The endlesse worke of Sisiphus you procure,
Whose end is this to know you striue in vaine,
Hope and desire which now your Idols bee,
You needs must loose and feele dispaire with mee.
O sweet woods, &c.
O how much, &c.
You woods in you the fairest Nimphs haue walked,
Nimphes at whose sight all harts did yeeld to Loue,
You woods in whom deere louers oft haue talked,
How doe you now a place of mourning proue,
Wansted my Mistres saith this is the doome,
Thou art loues Childbed, Nursery, and Tombe.
O sweet woods, &c.
O how much, &c.