John Dowland's professional life perversely mirrored the unrequited state of the courtly lover. His musical virtues were well known. He had apparently studied music from childhood, serving in the noble household of Sir Henry Cobham, and later taking music degrees from perhaps both Oxford and Cambridge. Queen Elizabeth I herself heard his music at least as early as 1590. Yet at the 1597 publication of Dowland's First Booke of Songes, the man was living in exile from England, unable even to return to the island. His songs were innovative and polished enough to be considered the foundation of the very genre of English song. Yet they had to travel across the water to his homeland. Even so, the poet of courtly love sends tears and sighs flying to his distant beloved, praying that their passion might melt the hardness of her heart and bring him the joyous reward of his devotion. This is exactly the situation in the poem "Go, crystall teares," which Dowland set to music and published in the First Booke.

The poet of "Go, crystall teares" asks both tears and sighs—"products of a spotless heart and patient eyes"—to entreat mercy of his love. Whereas the poetic sentiments seem conventional, in this case, they may have a lofty pedigree in English translations of a Petrarch sonnet, "Ite calde sospiri," which was known in Elizabethan England. In Dowland's hands, furthermore, Go crystal tears may be elevated to a sublime expression of hope fighting despair. From the very first phrase, Dowland sets up the drama. The melodic line gradually expands from a terse opening to a series of three phrases that gradually lengthen and climb upwards. The accompanying lines, however, betray its crest: the alto by a melodic sequence that drips downwards beneath it, and the bass by a pair of lamentable descents. The text continues to ask that the tears, like morning dew, revive "drooping flowers"; Dowland's music briefly hints at the relative major, yet closes on a mournful half-cadence. Though miniature in scope, Go crystal tears elegantly expresses the pathos of its sentiment. As it turns out, the composer finally, in his 50th year, achieved the court post he had been seeking.

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