O Dowland, Old John Dowland

O Dowland, old John Dowland, make a tune for this,

Two lovers married, like two turtle-doves,

Whose mutual eyes no curtain knew nor shade their kiss

And fruitful with a child their holiday loves.

Set that to harmony and then beside it set

Heaven steeled with armament and nations bent

On conquest and resistance, the unavoided net

Of time still drawn in moment by moment.

Is there for such sorrow and love, Dowland, a tune

In your book? Heavy is it for lute to lift?

Yet must we make our poem of it and on the dune

Of this century scatter our sea-thrift.

HAL SUMMERS

Mrs John Dowland

Do they ask after me

the foreign musicians,

when you play the galliard

for two upon one lute?

Cantus high on the fingerboard,

Bassus on the lower frets;

hands changing position

above the rose?

Here there is no perfect measure

for the visitation of the plague –

no resolution

for figures on a ground –

only the memory of how

you brooded over my body;

and the speaking harmony

with which, beyond all music

I would stop your lips.

PAULINE STAINER

John Dowland on the Lute:

A Round of Variations

I

I have to think of curvatures and, hand

On notes, send these discoveries

From sea or land,

For they are my recoveries

From all the Continent,

Whence I search every sentiment.

II

My lute's circumference

I navigate as if a globe,

Its ribs the longitude,

Its neck proud prow.

My fingers on it now

Discovering the mood,

Its fantasy my robe

Of melancholy sense.

III

My tears the condensation of my brain,

That clear alembick that distils

The bitter, bitter drops of pain

The strain inside that wills

The grievance of a sad pavane.

IV

And yet in glass perfection

Will I compose a galliard

In crystalline connection

To ayres of which I am ‘the Bard’.

V

And I can compose a jigge,

Hey ho and sprightly move

My fingers so they dig

And on the fretboard prove

More nimble than the feet

And certainly more sweet.