Search - The Elizabethan Consort :: My Hearts Delight

My Heart's Desire Love songs and ballads form the Elizabethan age. Great romantic ballads and airs from sixteenth century England by Dowland, Campion, Rosseter and Holborne, accompanied by viols, lutes and recorders in an evocative programme full of feeling that brings the Tudor age to life. The Elizabethan Consort - Sara Stowe, voice Heather Birt, tenor viol and violin Wendy Hancock, treble viol and recorders Stewart McCoy, lute Matthew Spring, lute and bass viol Martin Souter, virginals. Awake sweet love, thou art returned, My heart, which long in absence mourned, Lives now in perfect joy. Let love, which never absent dies, Now live for ever in her eyes, Whence came my first annoy. Only herself hath seemed fair, She only I could love, She only drove me to despair, When she unkind did prove. Despair did make me wish to die, That I my joys might end, She only, which did make me fly, My state may now amend. If she esteem thee now aught worth, She will not grieve thy love henceforth, Which so despair hath proved, Despair hat proved now in me, That love will not unconstant be, Though long in vain I loved. If she at last reward thy love And all thy harms repair, Thy happiness will sweeter prove, Raised up from deep despair. And if that now thou welcome be, When thou with her dost meet, She all this while but played with thee: To make thy joys more sweet. This collection of love songs and ballads from the Elizabethan age brings to life the emotion and poetic soul which lay behind so many of the artists and performers of the day. These songs bring together superb music and wonderful poetry - expression is everything, sincerity the order of the day. Enjoy this collection, with its wonderful variety of instruments, and relax to the music of a more gentle, chivalrous age! If my complaints could passions move, Or make Love see wherein I suffer wrong, My passions were enough to prove That my despairs had governed me too long. O Love, I live and die in thee; Thy grief in my deep sighs still speaks; They wounds do freshly bleed in me; My heart for thy unkindness breaks. Yet thou dost hope when I despair, And when I hope thou mak'st me hope in vain. Thou say'st thou cans my harms repair, Yet for redress thou let'st me still complain. Can Love be rich, and yet I want? Is Love my judge and yet I am condemned? Thou plenty hast, yet me dost scant; Thou made a god, and yet thy power contemned. That I do live, it is thy power; That I desire, it is thy worth. If Love doth make men's lives too sour Let me not love nor live henceforth. Die shall my hopes, but not my faith That you, that of my fall may hearers be, May here despair, which truly saith I was more true to Love than Love to me.