This little song by Thomas Campion (1567-1620) speaks of the beauty of Corinna’s voice as she sings. The poem works in two stanzas with a quick development of a seemingly simple idea. And yet this simple idea in its perfectly balanced symmetry of concept and structure is deceptive. 

When to her lute Corinna sings

Her voice revives the leaden strings, 

And doth in highest notes appear

As any challenged echo clear;

But when she doth of mourning speak

Ev’n with her signs the strings do break. 

And as her lute doth live or die,

Led by her passion, so must I:

For when of pleasure she doth sing,

My thoughts enjoy a sudden spring,

But if she doth of sorrow speak,

Ev’n from my heart the strings do break.

In the first stanza, the lute which accompanies her voice is made better and is commanded by the beauty of her song. The strings are “lead” until they are revived by her voice. The word “revived” is interesting, because it is to live again – not to live at all. But it seems the idea is that the lute is silent until Corinna starts to sing. 

Accompanied by her lute, Corinna sings “to her lute”.  The singer and the lute form a closed circle. The strings come to life (as presumably did last time only to die when she stopped singing last); and the strings become filled with sorrow, when her voice becomes filled with sorrow. 

This reminds of Orpheus, whose song could make rocks and trees dance. As Shakespeare’s short poem reads:

ORPHEUS 

Orpheus with his lute made trees

And the mountain tops that freeze

    Bow themselves when he did sing:

To his music plants and flowers

Ever sprung; as sun and showers

    There had made a lasting spring.

Every thing that heard him play,

Even the billows of the sea,

    Hung their heads and then lay by.

In sweet music is such art,

    Killing care and grief of heart

    Fall asleep, or hearing, die.

That remarkable power of song then works not merely upon the inanimate lute, but upon the poet.  The poet enters this closed circle: What happens between Corinna and the lute now brings him into its charm: 

And as her lute doth live or die,

Led by her passion, so must I:

The passions in Corinna’s voice bring along the poet. The lute which perhaps changes insensibly changes the sensible poet. The passions of her voice are so profound that he no longer has say over himself:

So must I. 

It is involuntary. 

The circle is then completely closed: the poet is subsumed back into the image of the lute. Note the progression here from “thoughts” (which belong to the man), to “strings” which belong to the lute:

For when of pleasure she doth sing,

My thoughts enjoy a sudden spring,

But if she doth of sorrow speak,

Ev’n from my heart the strings do break.

His very heart has become the lute. This ability to bring the conceit (the controlling thought) from lute to poet to lute is an aspect which raises Campion from the great mass of versifiers. 

There is then one final twist to the poem: the poem itself is an artifact. Corinna is gone. I have no idea who she is. Her voice was there in a moment and has disappeared forever. But this poem remains being as the echo of her voice

And doth in highest notes appear

As any challenged echo clear;

The reader who follows along with Campion can, by the work of imagination, enter into this circle of Corinna and her lute by means of the poem. Corinna’s voice does charm by means of this echo and we enter into this singular moment by means of the poem from 400 years ago. 

And in that the moment is no loner singular, but is transported across time and space. Such things may not “mean” anything to the great powers of countries and armies and economies and science. But there is a beauty here in art which should make the mighty blush. The politics of James (King of England) cannot affect now like Corinna’s song has by means of Campion’s poem.

One final note: I have always found it striking that the Bible routinely portrays heaven as filled with music.

The soprano Jennifer O’Loughlin: