Book club party games 3

Here is the second poem which will have to be read aloud to the others in order to receive the little gift in pass-the-parcel. I don’t know Thomas Campion, or at least I cannot remember any poems by him.He was born in 1567,  and was a physician, a composer, and a poet. His parents died while he was a child, but when he was nineteen he enrolled at Gray’s Inn, a law school, and began to perform in plays and masques. he spent some time in France but was also a doctor in London. His first published works were five songs, which appeared in 1591 and he continued as a composer and poet. Some of his work was commissioned by the king, James I, but he died at the age of fifty-three in 1620, probably of the plague.

Now winter nights enlarge
Now winter nights enlarge
    This number of their hours;
And clouds their storms discharge
    Upon the airy towers.
Let now the chimneys blaze
    And cups o'erflow with wine,
Let well-tuned words amaze
    With harmony divine.
Now yellow waxen lights 
    Shall wait on honey love
While youthful revels, masques, and courtly sights 
    Sleep's leaden spells remove.

This time doth well dispense
    With lovers' long discourse;
Much speech hath some defense,
    Though beauty no remorse.
All do not all things well:
    Some measures comely tread,
Some knotted riddles tell,
    Some poems smoothly read.
The summer hath his joys,
    And winter his delights;
Though love and all his pleasures are but toys
    They shorten tedious nights.

The fourth poem will be a little one by Robert Frost,after three English poets, let’s have an American. This is another poem which could inspire a whole novel… wonderful, wonderful!

Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening

Whose woods these are I think I know.
His house is in the village though;
He will not see me stopping here
To watch his woods fill up with snow.

My little horse must think it queer
To stop without a farmhouse near
Between the woods and frozen lake
The darkest evening of the year.

He gives his harness bells a shake
To ask if there is some mistake.
The only other sound's the sweep
Of easy wind and downy flake.

The woods are lovely, dark, and deep.
But I have promises to keep,
And miles to go before I sleep,
And miles to go before I sleep.