Follow thy fair sun, unhappy shadow,
Though thou be black as night,
And she made all of light,
Yet follow thy fair sun, unhappy shadow.

This lyric is from Thomas Campion’s early-17th-century songbook culture, written to be sung with musical accompaniment in the courtly/urban milieu where his “ayres” circulated. Campion frequently adapts Petrarchan love conventions—idealizing the beloved as a radiant “sun” while casting the lover as diminished, wounded, or unworthy. The stanza belongs to a poem that dramatizes the lover’s self-abasement and persistence: even if the speaker is “black as night” beside the beloved’s light, he is urged (or urges himself) to keep following. The refrain-like repetition suggests a song structure meant for performance and memorability.

The speaker casts himself as an “unhappy shadow,” defined by absence of light and by dependence on the “fair sun” he follows. The contrast—“black as night” versus “all of light”—intensifies the sense of unworthiness and longing: the beloved’s radiance both attracts and exposes the lover’s darkness. Yet the repeated imperative “follow” suggests devotion that persists despite hopelessness or inequality. Read more broadly, the lyric captures a paradox of desire: the beloved is the source of illumination and meaning, but also unreachable, so the lover’s pursuit becomes both sustaining and painful. The refrain’s circularity mirrors the inescapable loop of yearning.