Poem of the Day: ‘When to Her Lute Corinna Sings’

Thomas Campion (1567–1620), whose time at Cambridge overlapped with that of his poetic contemporary Thomas Nashe, was a composer of lute songs and masques as well as, eventually, a practicing physician. In his 1602 treatise Observations in the Art of English Poesie, Campion inveighed against “the vulgar and artificial custom of riming,” while elsewhere he objected to the vain repetitive intricacies of the madrigal. “When to Her Lute Corinna Sings,” written about 1601, occurs in tetrameter couplets, of the sort that its author would have described as “ear-pleasing rimes without art.” Its subject reflects his preference for the simple treble vocal line and stringed accompaniment of the solo “ayre.”