Sleep, fleshly birth, in peaceful earth
And let thine ears list to the music of the spheres
While we around this fairy ground
Thy doleful obit keeping
Make marble melt with weeping
With num’rous feet we’ll part and meet
Then chorus-like in a ring thy praises sing
While show’rs of flow’rs bestrew thee
We’ll thus with tears bedew thee
Rest in soft peace, sweet youth, and there remain
’till soul and body meet to join again

Robert Ramsey

Draw on, sweet Night, best friend unto those cares
  That do arise from painful melancholy;
My life so ill through want of comfort fares,
  That unto thee I consecrate it wholly.

Sweet Night, draw on; my griefs, when they be told
  To shades and darkness, find some ease from paining;
And while thou all in silence dost enfold,
  I then shall have best time for my complaining.

John Wilbye 1574-1638

Whilst the words of Robert Ramsey reflect a little of the hope that we have in the resurrection of the dead at the glorious return of the Lord Jesus Christ, they seem to contain more of the idyllic and vain hope of the Greek, and without the final line the bleak, lost hopelessness of the contemporary humanist, so contrary to the teaching of our Lord.

On the other hand the words of John Wilbye speak much more clearly of the pain of this present world, reflecting more of the complaint of Job in his distress¹, which rested upon his hope in the resurrection of the dead when he would see his Saviour face to face² and in which he reminded us of the judgement that shall face all of us on that great and tremendous day. Job also stands as a picture to us of the righteous man³ who suffered⁴, prefiguring the crucifixion of our Lord Jesus Christ, the innocent one who died for the guilty.

Wilbye has been taken from COLLECTION MUSICALE EN FORMAT NUMÉRIQUE Polyphonies vocales de la Renaissance notated by Coco in Noteworthy and.corrected as appeared to Coco to be necessary.

There is no copyright claim on the document:
https://s9.imslp.org/files/imglnks/usimg/c/c3/IMSLP404088-PMLP654354-Wilbye_J_-_Draw_on_sweet_Night_-_EN215-02(2015).PDF

1. After this Job opened his mouth and cursed the day of his birth. And Job spoke, and said:
   
   ‘May the day perish on which I was born, and the night in which it was said, “A male child is conceived.”
   May that day be darkness; may God above not seek it, nor the light shine upon it.
   May darkness and the shadow of death claim it; may a cloud settle on it; may the blackness of the day terrify it.
   As for that night, may darkness seize it; may it not rejoice among the days of the year, may it not come into the number of the months.
   Oh, may that night be barren! May no joyful shout come into it!
   May those curse it who curse the day, those who are ready to arouse Leviathan.
   May the stars of its morning be dark; may it look for light, but have none, and not see the dawning of the day;
   because it did not shut up the doors of my mother’s womb, nor hide sorrow from my eyes.
   
   Why did I not die at birth? Why did I not perish when I came from the womb?
   Why did the knees receive me? Or why the breasts, that I should nurse?
   For now I would have lain still and been quiet, I would have been asleep; then I would have been at rest with kings and counselors of the earth, who built ruins for themselves,
   or with princes who had gold, who filled their houses with silver;
   or why was I not hidden like a stillborn child, like infants who never saw light?
   There the wicked cease from troubling, and there the weary are at rest.
   There the prisoners rest together; they do not hear the voice of the oppressor.
   The small and great are there, and the servant is free from his master.
   Why is light given to him who is in misery, and life to the bitter of soul,
   who long for death, but it does not come, and search for it more than hidden treasures;
   who rejoice exceedingly, and are glad when they can find the grave?
   Why is light given to a man whose way is hidden, and whom God has hedged in?
   For my sighing comes before I eat, and my groanings pour out like water.
   For the thing I greatly feared has come upon me, and what I dreaded has happened to me.
   I am not at ease, nor am I quiet; I have no rest, for trouble comes.‘
   Job 3
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2. My bone clings to my skin and to my flesh, and I have escaped by the skin of my teeth.
   Have pity on me, have pity on me, O you my friends, for the hand of God has struck me!
   Why do you persecute me as God does, and are not satisfied with my flesh?
   Oh, that my words were written! Oh, that they were inscribed in a book!
   That they were engraved on a rock with an iron pen and lead, forever!
   
   For I know that my Redeemer lives, and He shall stand at last on the earth;
   and after my skin is destroyed, this I know, that in my flesh I shall see God,
   whom I shall see for myself, and my eyes shall behold, and not another.
   
   How my heart yearns within me!
   If you should say, “How shall we persecute him?”— since the root of the matter is found in me,
   be afraid of the sword for yourselves; for wrath brings the punishment of the sword, that you may know there is a judgment.
   Job 19:20-29
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3. There was a man in the land of Uz, whose name was Job; and that man was blameless and upright, and one who feared God and shunned evil. Job 1:1
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4. Then the Lord said to Satan, ‘Have you considered my servant Job, that there is none like him on the earth, a blameless and upright man, one who fears God and shuns evil? And still he holds fast to his integrity, although you incited me against him, to destroy him without cause.’ Job 2:3
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