When to Her Lute Corinna Sings
by Thomas Campion
This poem is very sorrowful, and elegant to me. This poem strikes sorrow to me with these lines, "Her voice revives the leaden strings." (Page 989, Line 2) In other words singing relieves her well being. I think this line also means that the man who watches her sing goes to hear her sing, because it makes him less stressful. He can listen to her sing and be at ease with himself and all around him. Her voice is a very powerful tool to him. When she tries to reach the highest notes, it is a challenge and when she sings them there is a dead silence, "And doth the highest notes appear as any challenged echo clear." (Page 989, Line 3) The audience is noisy or however and as she sings the high notes, the noise disappears. I think singing is what she longs to do, her singing is her passion, it is her way of life, it is who she is. Her passion, is her drive for life, to live. The man who watches her sing is awestruck by her voice, by her passion. He feels joy from her singing, “For when of pleasure she doth sing, my thoughts enjoy a sudden spring.” (Page 989, Line 10) This poem is of love, and muse. The voice of the woman is a muse to the man who watches her. He is hypnotized, he can’t stop listening to her sing, he can’t stop watching her. When she sings of sorrow or is in sorrow, the man’s heart is broken. He cannot bear to see her in that way, “But if she doth of sorrow speak, Ev’n from my heart the strings do break.” (Page 989, Line 11) This poem you have to read more than once, after the few first times of reading this poem I kept analyzing each line, and this is how I responded to it. This poem can get very deep, you just have to be willing to dig for it.
A couple of comments:
ReplyDeleteThe first two lines recall for me the idea of sympathetic vibration. If you have a stringed instrument like a guitar (or, for the writer, a lute),singing or playing a note that corresponds to an open string makes that string vibrate. So (to me) the idea is that the lute is so "in tune" with her voice (and her mood) that it responds, almost coming to life in a way, and singing or playing back to her ("Revives the leaden strings"). But it's not just her voice, it's whether she is happy or in mourning, and when she speaks of mourning the strings break.
And so does the poet "live or die, [l]ed by her passion". "When of pleasure she doth sing, my thoughts enjoy a [sudden] spring". But when she speaks of sorrow, the strings of his heart break.
What I admire is the first part, in that image of the lute (inanimate until she "revives the leaden strings") responding to her voice and the happiness/sadness she expresses. Having illustrated it with the lute, another dimension appears as the poet's thoughts are also in tune with her.