The summer hath his joys,
And winter his delights;
Though love and all his pleasures are but toys,
They shorten tedious nights.

The speaker sets up a calm equivalence: every season has its compensations—summer’s “joys” and winter’s “delights.” The turn comes with the admission that “love and all his pleasures are but toys,” suggesting love’s entertainments are trivial, fleeting, or not to be taken with solemn seriousness. Yet those “toys” have a practical value: they relieve boredom and make long nights feel shorter. Campion’s characteristic poise lies in holding both attitudes at once—pleasure is minor and transient, but still genuinely consoling. The stanza thus treats love less as destiny than as a civilizing pastime that helps humans endure time, weather, and tedium.