Love

Must I complain, yet do enjoy my love

by Thomas Campion 1567–1620

From The Fourth Book of Airs (c. 1617)

Love

Must I complain, yet do enjoy my love;
She is too fair, too rich in lovely parts:
Thence is my grief, for Nature, while she strove
With all her graces and divinest arts
To form her too too beautiful of hue,
She had no leisure left to make her true.

Should I, aggrieved, then wish she were less fair?
That were repugnant to mine own desires.
She is admired, new lovers still repair,
That kindles daily love's forgetful fires.
Rest, jealous thoughts, and thus resolve at last, —
She hath more beauty than becomes the chaste.

✦ ✦ ✦

The Fourth Book of Airs (c. 1617)

MLA

Campion, Thomas. “Must I complain, yet do enjoy my love.” Poetry Codex, poetrycodex.com/poem/campion/113/.

Chicago

Campion, Thomas. “Must I complain, yet do enjoy my love.” Poetry Codex. https://poetrycodex.com/poem/campion/113/.

Read this poem with the Codex →

More by Thomas Campion