III.
When (like committed linnets<50.5>) I
With shriller throat shall sing
The sweetnes, mercy, majesty,
And glories of my King.
When I shall voyce aloud, how good
He is, how great should be,
Inlarged winds, that curle the flood,
Know no such liberty.
IV.
Stone walls doe not a prison make,
Nor iron bars a cage;
Mindes innocent and quiet take
That for an hermitage;
If I have freedome in my love,
And in my soule am free,
Angels alone that sore above
Enjoy such liberty.
<50.1> The first stanza of this famous song is harmonized in CHEERFULL AYRES OR BALLADS: FIRST COMPOSED FOR ONE SINGLE VOICE, AND SINCE SET FOR THREE VOICES. By John Wilson, Dr. in Music, Professor of the same in the University of Oxford. Oxford, 1660 (Sept. 20, 1659), 4to. p. 10. I have sometimes thought that, when Lovelace composed this production, he had in his recollection some of the sentiments in Wither's SHEPHERDS HUNTING, 1615. See, more particularly, the sonnet (at p. 248 of Mr. Gutch's Bristol edition) commencing:—
"I that er'st while the world's sweet air did draw."
<50.2> Peele, in KING DAVID AND FAIR BETHSABE, 1599, has a similar figure, where David says:—
"Now comes my lover tripping like the roe,
And brings my longings tangled in her hair."
The "lover" is of course Bethsabe.
<50.3> Thus Middleton, in his MORE DISSEMBLERS BESIDES WOMEN, printed in 1657, but written before 1626, says:—
"But for modesty,
I should fall foul in words upon fond man,
That can forget his excellence and honour,
His serious meditations, being the end
Of his creation, to learn well to die;
And live a PRISONER TO A WOMAN'S EYE."
<50.4> Original reads GODS; the present word is substituted in accordance with a MS. copy of the song printed by the late Dr. Bliss, in his edition of Woods ATHENAE. If Dr. Bliss had been aware of the extraordinary corruptions under which the text of LUCASTA laboured, he would have had less hesitation in adopting BIRDS as the true reading. The "Song to Althea," is a favourable specimen of the class of composition to which it belongs; but I fear that it has been over-estimated.