Some poems have associated music pages (starting p. [54]). Html links have been added to playable and printable music files (prepared by the transcriber).
Page 57: This is only the first page of the original two pages (28 and 29) from William Corkine's "Second Book of Ayres" (1612), for 'Page [46]. The Baite'. It is possible that John Donne wrote "The Baite" for a different melody, which no longer exists. The melody on page 57 may have been intended for Christopher Marlowe's "The Passionate Shepherd to his Love:
Come live with me and be my love:
And we will all the pleasures prove
That hills and valleys, dales and fields,
Woods or sleepy mountain yields."
As Donne's 'The Baite' ("Come live with me and be my love...."), was a parody of Marlowe's "Come live with me....", the same tune may have later been used for both.
The PDF and Midi files are an approximate transcription of the melody line for the first 16 bars, i.e., the first stanza, up to the first double barline. There appear to be only 11 bars in this section, but it can be seen from the image that a lot of the barlines are missing. These have been restored in the PDF and Midi files, so that the transcription actually makes sense, and fits the words.
The melody was transcribed using John Dowland's lute fretting chart, which gives the open strings, ascending, as: G, C, F, A, D, G, with open string, a, first fret, b, then c, d, e, f, g, h, i, k, l.