This poem and many others I copied out of Mr. Nahum's book in their original spelling. At first I found the reading of some of them very troublesome. It was like looking at a dried-up flower or beetle. But there the things were; and after a good deal of trouble I not only began to read them more easily, but grew to like them thus for their own sake. First, because this was as they were actually written, before our English printers agreed to spell alike; and next, because the old words with their look of age became a pleasure to me in themselves. It was like watching the dried-up flower or beetle actually and as if by a magic of the mind coming to life. Besides, many of Shakespeare's small poems were already known to me. It touched them with newness to see them (though indeed he never so saw them), as they appeared (seven years after his death), in the pages of the famous folio volume of his Plays that was printed in 1623 by Isaac Jaggard and Edward Blount.
Not only that; for it is curious too to see how in the old days English was constantly changing—its faded words falling like dead leaves from a tree, and new ones appearing. In a book which William Caxton printed as far back even as 1490, he says: "And certainly our language now used varieth far from that which was used and spoken when I was born. For we Englishmen be born under the domination of the moon, which is never steadfast but ever wavering, waxing one season and waneth and decreaseth another season." So in our own day words, like human beings, come into the world and pass away: and many gradually change their meanings.
For if the spelling of a word alters its effect on the eye, it must also affect the mind of the reader; and I must confess that "my lovynge deare," looks to me to tell of somebody more lovable even than "my loving dear." And what about shoogar-plummes, cleere greye eies, the murrkie fogghe, the moones enravysshynge?
And what about—
"Let's goe to Bedde," says Sleepihed;
"Tarrie a while," says Slowe;
"Putte on the Panne," says Greedie Nanne,
"Wee'll suppe afore wee goe."
Not that I have always kept to the old spellings. I have followed my fancy; and if anyone would like to see an old poem in its first looks that is here printed in our own way, all he need do is to go back to the book in which it first appeared.