# If love be life, I long to die

- Music: Ann Mounsey (died 1891)
- Words: Walter Raleigh (died 1846)
- Licence of the score: CC0 1.0
- Credit: OpenScore Lieder Corpus (CC0)
- Source: https://musescore.com/openscore-lieder-corpus/scores/6646808

## The words

If love be life, I long to die,  
Live they that list, for me; And he that gains  
the most thereby,  
A fool, at least, shall be:  
But he that feels the sorest fits,  
'Scapes with no less than loss of wits.  
Unhappy life they gain, Which love do  
entertain.  
In day, by fained looks, they live;  
By lying dreams, at night;  
Each frown, a deadly wound doth give;  
Each smile, a false delight. If't hap' their  
Lady pleasant seem, It is for other's love  
they deem; If void she seems of joy,  
Disdain doth make her coy.  
Such is the peace that lovers find,  
Such is the life they lead; Blown here and there  
with ev'ry wind, Like flowers in the mead.  
Now war, now peace, now war again;  
Desire, despair, delight, disdain.  
Though dead, in midst of life;  
In peace, and yet in strife.  

Songs to sing here are made from public-domain scores: the OpenScore Lieder Corpus (CC0), the Mutopia Project (each score's licence as Mutopia states it) and the scores in Japanese Wikipedia's articles (CC BY-SA 4.0, by each article's contributors); dates and first publications as IMSLP, the LiederNet Archive, Mutopia and Wikidata state them. Karaoke videos play in YouTube's player; live channels from the iptv-org database on their own pages; stations from Radio Browser. The piano is the Salamander Grand Piano by Alexander Holm (CC BY 3.0).