Farewell too faire

Song Meaning

The speaker bids a bitter farewell to a beloved, whose beauty is described as "too faire, too chast but too too cruell." This paradox immediately sets up a central conflict: the beloved's perceived severity and cruelty, despite outward chastity and beauty, have fueled the speaker's intense passion. The speaker laments that this same beloved now seeks to extinguish that passion with mere words, a futile gesture against a fire already ignited. The core of the speaker's grievance is that discretion and severity cannot quench the very passion they have provoked. The dominant tension arises from the beloved's contradictory nature and actions. They are simultaneously "too faire" and "too cruell," inspiring deep desire yet rejecting it with harshness. The speaker feels their heart has been made "thine angers fuell," only for the beloved to attempt to "kill my passions with thy words." This suggests a dynamic where the beloved's very aloofness has intensified the speaker's feelings, making the subsequent rejection feel like a deliberate, almost perverse, act. The lyrics offer a stark "anatamy" of "prowd beauties." The repeated phrase "If that secure severe in secrecie, farewell" acts as a refrain, summarizing the speaker's conclusion. It implies that such proud beauty, when "secure" in its severity and "in secrecie" (perhaps meaning hidden or unyielding), inevitably leads to this painful parting. The speaker observes that love, even when constant, can be "tired" by neglect and "forc't from blisse unwillingly to part," a poignant observation on the fragility of affection when met with indifference. This piece resonates because it articulates a specific kind of heartbreak: the pain of unrequited love where the object of affection is both the source of intense desire and the agent of its destruction. The speaker’s frustration isn't just about rejection, but about the perceived injustice of being inflamed only to be cooled by words. The stark, almost clinical dissection of "prowd beauties" as inherently leading to such sorrow gives the lament a sharp, intellectual edge, making the emotional wound feel all the more profound.