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   Samuel Daniel (1562-1619)

        from Hymen's Triumph

    The Song of the First Chorus

    Love is a sickness full of woes,
          All remedies refusing:
    A plant that with most cutting grows,
          Most barren with best using.
                                  Why so?
    More we enjoy it, more it dies,
    If not enjoy'd, it sighing cries,
                                  Hey ho.
    Love is a torment of the mind,
          A tempest everlasting;
    And Jove hath made it of a kind,
          Not well, nor full nor fasting.
                                  Why so?
    More we enjoy it, more it dies
    If not enjoyd, it sighing cries,
                                  Hey ho.

 

The above poem appears at the end of Act I of Hymen's Triumph. The play was written for the wedding of the Lord Roxborough, and was first published in 1615. The version above is a modernization of the 1623 edition printed by Nicholas Okes for Simon Waterson in London. A reprint of this text can be found in:
  • Daniel, Samuel. The Complete Works in Verse and Prose. Rev. Alexander B. Grosart, ed. London: Hazell, Watson, and Viney, Ltd., 1885.

    The text has been modernized in spelling only. The extra "e" has been removed from sicknesse, growes, minde, and kinde. All of the "j" were originally "i" and were changed as well. Finally, dyes has been corrected to dies.

    Another modernization can be found in:

  • Bryant, William Cullen, ed. A New Library of Poetry and Song (Utopian Edition). Garden City, NY: Doubleday, Page & Company, 1927.