Come Again, Sweet Love Doth Now Invite

“Come again, sweet love doth now invite” is a song with music John Dowland, anonymous lyrics. This is not that song. That is a great song though–very over the top sad and also very cute and catchy! This is music I wrote for those same lyrics.

Come again!
Sweet love doth now invite
Thy graces that refrain
To do me due delight,
To see, to hear, to touch, to kiss, to die,
With thee again in sweetest sympathy.

Come again!
That I may cease to mourn
Through thy unkind disdain;
For now left and forlorn
I sit, I sigh, I weep, I faint, I die
In deadly pain and endless misery.

All the night
My sleeps are full of dreams,
My eyes are full of streams.
My heart takes no delight
Her smiles, my springs that makes my joys to grow,
Her frowns the Winters of my woe.

Out alas,
My faith is ever true,
Yet will she never rue
Nor yield me any grace;
Her eyes of fire, her heart of flint is made,
Whom neither tears nor truth may once persuade.

The first of a bit of a project of setting old/Elizabethan era lyrics/poetry to music…

Dowland, and others of the era, but Dowland was RENOWNED for it, wrote such enjoyably, beautifully, over-the-top melancholy tragic songs. This was super trendy and they were really POPULAR.

So, if there’s a concept here, it’s that I’m setting the words with the same kind of melancholy and sincerity despite their excessiveness, but in a more modern folk-pop-idk idiom, a sort of parallel.

‘Home Away From Home’ (FFVII Remake) oboe and piano

I did a quick transcription of another pretty piece from the Final Fantasy VII remake. This piece is by Takafumi Imamura, using themes by Nobuo Uematsu from the original game (Main Theme and Holding Thoughts In My Heart). And I played it on piano and oboe 🙂

Home away from home (in Bb) score on musescore

Four more ukulele songs

More short songs I wrote as I learn ukulele. I noticed a few of these have a theme of being sung to/about women or girls (as they’re originally from a book of children’s poetry).

Words by Kate Greenaway (1846 – 1901) from her beautiful books, Marigold Garden and Under the Window — also where the thumbnail art is from. This is another sort of jam session with three songs, one sort of work tape………. and some bonus dog content!

  1. The Little Queen
  2. Susan Blue
  3. Mary
  4. Out of Wonderworld

Another for the Winkworth songbook

This is the first Catherine Winkworth hymn that I actually wrote on ukulele, and it’s got a nice chill feel I think. I also had a go at modernising the language slightly here, and a few line rewrites of my own for rhymes that I broke on the way.

God, you are my rock of strength

God, you are my rock of strength,
And my home is in your arms,
You will send me help at length,
And I will feel no wild alarms.
Sin nor Death can pierce the shield
Your defence has o’er me thrown,
Up to you myself I yield,
And my sorrows are your own.

When my trials are too long,
Unto you I look and wait,
Knowing none, though keen and strong,
Can my faith in you abate,
And this faith I long have nursed,
Comes from you, a gift so free;
You my heart did open first,
You have set this hope in me.

‘Neath the shadow of your wings
Keep me ever close to you,
In the peace your mercy brings,
Keep me all my journey through;
Be my All, in all I do,
Let me ever seek your will.
Where the heart to God is true,
All is peaceful, calm, and still.