What if a day (Anonymous)
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- (Posted 2016-01-05) CPDL #38070:
- Editor: Tulipo Petressian (submitted 2016-01-05). Score information: A4, 2 pages Copyright: CPDL
- Edition notes: from: Reliquary of English Song, F. Hunter Potter, 1915.
General Information
Title: What if a Day
Composer: Anonymous
Lyricist:
Number of voices: 1v Voicing: Solo medium
Genre: Secular, Lute song
Language: English
Instruments: arr. piano
First published:
Description: occasionally attributed to Thomas Campion.
External websites:
Original text and translations
English text
What if a day, or a month, or a year,
Crown thy delights with a thousand sweet contentings?
May not the change of a night or an hour
Cross thy delights with as many sad tormentings?
Fortune, honor, beauty, youth are but blossoms dying;
Wanton pleasure, doating love,
Are but shadowes flying,
All our joys are but toys,
Idle thoughts deceiving;
None hath power of an hour
Of the life's bereaving.
Earth's but a point of the world, and a man
Is but a point of the worlds compared centre:
Shall then the point of a point be so vain
As to triumph in a silly point's adventure?
All in hazard that we have;
Here is nothing biding;
Days of pleasure are as streams
Thro' faire meadows gliding.
Weal or woe, time doth go,
Time hath no returning:
Secret fates guide our states,
Both in mirth and mourning.