Let now the chimneys blaze And cups o'erflow with wine; Let well-tuned words amaze With harmony divine....

These lines come from Thomas Campion’s lyric “Now Winter Nights Enlarge,” a song written for domestic performance in early Stuart England. Campion (1567–1620) was both poet and composer, and his songs were circulated in printed songbooks and performed in courtly and educated household settings with lute accompaniment. The poem evokes the seasonal shift into winter, when longer nights draw people indoors toward firelight, convivial drinking, and music-making. In that milieu, “chimneys blaze” and “cups o’erflow” are not merely festive details but markers of a cultivated social ritual—warmth, hospitality, and art (song and “well-tuned words”) as antidotes to cold and darkness.

The stanza is a call to embrace winter’s inward-turning season by intensifying communal pleasures: fire, wine, and music. Campion pairs physical comfort (“chimneys blaze”) with aesthetic delight (“well-tuned words… harmony divine”), suggesting that art refines and elevates festivity rather than opposing it. The imperative “Let…” frames celebration as a deliberate choice—a kind of seasonal philosophy in which warmth and song counteract bleakness. The emphasis on “harmony” also reflects Campion’s distinctive identity as a poet-composer: verbal wit and musical consonance become parallel forms of order, capable of transforming the long winter night into a space of shared, almost sacred, conviviality.