"Shall I Strive with Words to Move?", "Flow My Tears", "In Darkness Let Me Dwell", etc.

Dowland was the pre-eminent lute-song composer of Elizabethan England. Flow My Tears comes from the Second Booke of Songs of 1600; its falling four-note "tears" motif was later expanded into the instrumental collection Lachrimae and quoted repeatedly by his contemporaries. In Darkness Let Me Dwell, published in A Musicall Banquet in 1610, is the darkest song he wrote, ending unresolved on an incomplete line. Dowland spent much of his career abroad, holding a well-paid post at the Danish court before returning to England.