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Audiobook editionPaperback · 6 × 9 in · printing soonHardcover · 6 × 9 in · printing soonAbout this book
What remains when the music falls silent, but the words still hold love, grief, and the warmth of summer?
In Lyrics from the Song-Books of the Elizabethan Age, A. H. Bullen gathers short poems from late Elizabethan and early Stuart song-books. These are words meant for singing, drawn from books by John Dowland, Thomas Morley, Thomas Campion, Thomas Weelkes, and John Wilbye. Here, the poems stand apart from their music.
Love leads the collection, often through the pain of an unanswered lover. Mourning songs bring grief and death close to pleasure, while pastoral lyrics turn toward shepherds, nymphs, birds, and flowers. Many poems have no known author; their words survive because a musician includes them beneath a tune.
What you’ll discover
- Love without an answer Meet lovers whose short, polished songs give longing and disappointment room to speak.
- Sorrow beside pleasure Explore mourning lyrics and the melancholy that marks many of Dowland’s lute songs.
- A countryside in song Step among shepherds, fairies, birds, and flowers in lyrics of spring and summer.
- Words worth speaking aloud Read slowly and let the line breaks guide your breath through these small poems.
- Voices without known names Discover poems preserved in song-books, even when the people who wrote them remain unknown.
Who will love it
You will love this if you enjoy short poems you can read aloud, if lute songs and madrigals draw you in, or if you like shepherds, sailors, fairies and lovers.
What’s inside
The key ideas, in the 15-minute summary
- Song words can stand as poems
- A quiet mind is a kingdom
- Sorrow finds a sweet voice
- Campion joins poetry and music
- Small songs hold whole moods
- Love becomes someone to argue with
- Contentment matters more than ambition
- The songs return to shared voices
- Different moods share a musical home
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Lyrics from the Song-Books of the Elizabethan Age
Lutenists, madrigal singers and a poet-doctor named Campion fill these songs of love, loss and contentment.
Medium level2–5 hours to read20 languages
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In short
What would it feel like to sit in a room in 1588, the year of the Spanish Armada, and hear singers praise a man who rules a whole kingdom inside his own head? That is the year William Byrd published the first important English songbook.
Lyrics from the Song-Books of the Elizabethan Age at a glance
- Reading time
- About 2 h 40 min2 h 5 min fast, 3 h 10 min slow
- Length
- 37,900 words
- Library level
- Medium longer sentences, everyday words
Reading time at 238 words a minute (fast 300, slow 200). How long the classics take to read · Updated
From the 15-minute summary · Key idea 1
Bullen hunts the songbooks for lost poems
A. H. Bullen begins with a plain claim. In the years around 1600, English composers published songbooks, and the poems inside them are good enough to stand alone. Some match, in neat finish, the shortest and finest poems of the Greek Anthology. Few readers knew this, because the verse lay buried in old music books.
So he went looking. He examined every old songbook in the British Museum library. He admits that a first attempt of this kind must be imperfect.
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Cite this edition
Lyrics from the Song-Books of the Elizabethan Age. Library of Alexandria, 2026, libraryofalexandria.com/products/lyrics-from-the-song-books-of-the-elizabethan-age.
Lyrics from the song-books of the Elizabethan Age. (2026). Library of Alexandria. https://libraryofalexandria.com/products/lyrics-from-the-song-books-of-the-elizabethan-age
Lyrics from the Song-Books of the Elizabethan Age. Library of Alexandria, 2026. https://libraryofalexandria.com/products/lyrics-from-the-song-books-of-the-elizabethan-age.
@book{anonymous2026lyrics,
title = {Lyrics from the Song-Books of the Elizabethan Age},
publisher = {Library of Alexandria},
year = {2026},
url = {https://libraryofalexandria.com/products/lyrics-from-the-song-books-of-the-elizabethan-age}
}
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What is Lyrics from the Song-Books of the Elizabethan Age about?
It collects the words of songs printed in English songbooks around 1600, by composers such as Byrd, Dowland, Morley, Weelkes and Campion. The poems cover love, loss, contentment, country life and playful rounds.
Who was Thomas Campion?
Campion was a composer, poet, doctor and masque writer who wrote both words and music for his songs. Bullen praises him as a lyric poet of the first rank, and the anthology includes many of his best poems.
What is a madrigal or a fa la la?
A madrigal is a song for several voices, and a ballet is a lighter, dancing kind. Fa la la is a nonsense refrain that singers join in on, and it marks the cheerful springtime songs.
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