Let now the chimneys blaze And cups o’erflow with wine... The summer hath his joys, And winter his delights; Though love and all his pleasures are but toys, They shorten tedious nights.

These lines come from one of Thomas Campion’s early-17th-century English “ayres” (songs), written to be sung with lute accompaniment in the Jacobean period. Campion—both poet and composer—published such lyrics in printed songbooks intended for domestic music-making among educated households. The speaker evokes wintertime conviviality: blazing hearths, overflowing cups, and love’s diversions as a remedy for long, dark evenings. The seasonal contrast (summer’s joys versus winter’s delights) reflects a common Renaissance lyric mode, but Campion’s tone is notably urbane and practical, presenting pleasure and sociability as a deliberate, almost medicinal response to cold and tedium.

The passage celebrates convivial warmth—literal and emotional—as an answer to winter’s “tedious nights.” Campion balances the natural cycle with human artifice: if summer offers pleasures effortlessly, winter requires that people create their own delights through fire, wine, and company. The line “Though love and all his pleasures are but toys” lightly deflates romantic idealism, treating love as a charming pastime rather than a solemn absolute; yet those “toys” have real value because they shorten time and ease discomfort. The poem thus frames pleasure as both ephemeral and necessary, suggesting that small, shared indulgences can dignify hardship and make even the bleak season hospitable.