| William Stanley Braithwaite, ed. The Book of Elizabethan Verse. 1907. | | | | To Music Bent Is My Retired Mind | | By Thomas Campion (1567–1620) |
| | | TO 1 music bent is my retired mind | |
| And fain would I some song of pleasure sing, | |
| But in vain joys no comfort now I find; | |
| From heavenly thoughts all true delight doth spring: | |
| Thy power, O God, Thy mercies to record, | 5 |
| Will sweeten every note and every word. | |
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| All earthly pomp or beauty to express | |
| Is but to carve in snow, in waves to write; | |
| Celestial things, though men conceive them less, | |
| Yet fullest are they in themselves of light: | 10 |
| Such beams they yield as know no means to die, | |
| Such heat they cast as lifts the spirit high. | |
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