“Ho! who comes here with bag-piping and drumming?
O, ’tis I see the morris-dance a coming.
Come, ladies, out, O come, come quickly,
And see about how trim they dance and trickly:
Hey! there again: hark! how the bells they shake it!
Now for our town! once there, now for our town and take it:
Soft awhile, not away so fast, they melt them!
Piper be hang’d, knave! look, the dancers swelt them.
Out, there, stand out!—you come too far (I say) in—
There give the hobby-horse more room to play in!”
“I woo with tears and ne’er the near.”—Ne’er the near (a proverbial expression) = Never the nigher.
Page [107]. “When they came home Sis floted cream.”—I suppose the meaning is that Sis skimmed the cream from the milk. Halliwell (Arch. Dict.) gives “Flotten-milk. Same as Flet-mitte” and “flet-mitte” is a north-country term for skimmed milk.
“Since first I saw.”—This exquisite song is also found in “The Golden Garland of Princely Delights,” 1620.
Page [114]. “Sweet Love, my only treasure.”—Printed in Davison’s “Poetical Rhapsody,” 1602, where it is subscribed with the mysterious initials “A. W.”
Page [115]. “Sweet, stay awhile.”—I suspect that this stanza does not really belong to Donne’s “Break of day;” it is not found in MS. copies of Donne’s poems, nor in any edition prior to that of 1669. Probably Donne’s verses were written as a companion-piece to the present poem.
Page [120]. “Yet merrily sings little Robin.”—The loveliest of all verses in praise of Robin Redbreast are in Chapman’s “Tears of Peace,” 1609:—
“Whose face the bird hid that loves humans best,
That hath the bugle eyes and rosy breast,
And is the yellow autumn’s nightingale.”
Page [120]. “The love of change.”—This is the first stanza of a poem which is printed entire (in six stanzas) in Davison’s “Poetical Rhapsody,” 1602.
Page [121]. “The lowest trees have tops.”—Printed in Davison’s “Poetical Rhapsody” with the signature “Incerto.”