Thomas Stanley

“That I might ever dream thus!” Thomas Stanley’s speaker begs, trying to hold one hour of imagined joy against the waking world. What can a dream give that waking life withholds?

Written in the seventeenth century, Stanley’s lyrics move through the charged spaces of love: a sleeper’s vision, a shepherd’s confession, a parting embrace. Gathered from editions published in 1647, 1651, and 1657, they mingle tender longing with sharp wit and sudden turns of thought. In one poem, a glow-worm’s faint light is eclipsed by the brightness of the beloved; in another, hope yields to a defiant calm before fate. Across these changing voices, pleasure and pain are never far apart. How much can a single moment of joy—and the memory of it—endure?

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