John Dowland

John Dowland (1563–1626) was an English composer, lutenist and singer. The lyrics of most of his songs are, through lack of evidence to the contrary, conventionally attributed to Dowland himself.

Quotes

 * True love cannot be changed, Though delight from desert Be estranged. Farewell, farewell But yet or ere I part (O cruel), Kiss me sweet, kiss me sweet my jewel.
 * "Wilt thou unkind thus reave me of my heart", line 25, The First Book of Songs (1597).


 * Come again: sweet love doth now invite, Thy graces that refrain, To do me due delight, To see, to hear, to touch, to kiss, to die, With thee again in sweetest sympathy.
 * "Come again", line 1, The First Book of Songs.


 * Flow my tears, fall from your springs, Exil'd for ever: let me mourn Where night's black bird her sad infamy sings, There let me live forlorn.
 * "Flow my tears", line 1, The Second Book of Songs (1600).


 * Hark you shadows that in darkness dwell, Learn to contemn light, Happy, happy they that in hell Feel not the world's despite.
 * "Flow my tears", line 21, The Second Book of Songs.


 * Semper Dowland semper dolens.
 * Translation: Always Dowland, always sorrowful.
 * Title of a pavan in Lachrimae, or Seven Tears (1604).

Criticism

 * He was the rarest musician that his age did behold; having travelled beyond the seas, and compounded English with foreign skill in that faculty.
 * Thomas Fuller The History of the Worthies of England ([1662] 1840), vol. 2, p. 426.


 * My favourite musician happens to be the same as Shakespeare's: John Dowland. His songs are sorrowful but heal the soul by their sweetness and courage.
 * Robert Graves, letter to Idries Shah, September 6, 1968; published in Between Moon and Moon: Selected Letters of Robert Graves 1946-1972, (1984), p. 272.