These verses are a more subtle experiment in metre by the musician
and poet, Campion, than even the following, Laura, which he himself
sweetly commended as "voluble, and fit to express any amorous
conceit." In Kind are her Answers the long syllables and the
trochaic movement of the short lines meet the contrary movement of
the rest, with an exquisite effect of flux and reflux. The
"dancers" whose time they sang must have danced (with Perdita) like
"a wave of the sea."


DIRGE


I have followed the usual practice in omitting the last and less
beautiful stanza.


FOLLOW


Campion's "airs," for which he wrote his words, laid rules too
urgent upon what would have been a delicate genius in poetry. The
airs demanded so many stanzas; but they gave his imagination leave
to be away, and they depressed and even confused his metrical play,
hurting thus the two vital spots of poetry. Many of the stanzas
for music make an unlucky repeating pattern with the poor variety
that a repeating wall-paper does not attempt. And yet Campion
began again and again with the onset of a true poet. Take, for
example, the poem beginning with the vitality of this line,
"touching in its majesty"-