“O we’ll sit on his bonny breast-bane,
And we’ll pyke out his bonny gray een;
Wi’ ae lock o’ his gowden hair,
We’ll theek our nest when it blaws bare.
“Mony a ane for him makes mane,
But none sall ken where he is gane:
Ower his banes when they are bare,
The wind sall blaw for evermair.”
Page [130]. “Think’st thou to seduce me,” &c.—In William Corkine’s “Airs,” 1610, this song is found with considerable variations. Corkine gives only three stanzas. The first stanza agrees closely with Campion’s text; the second and third stanzas run thus:—
“Learn to speak first, then to woo, to wooing much pertaineth;
He that hath not art to hide, soon falters when he feigneth,
And, as one that wants his wits, he smiles when he complaineth.
“If with wit we be deceived our faults may be excusèd,
Seeming good with flattery graced is but of few refusèd,
But of all accursed are they that are by fools abusèd.”
Page [131]. “Thou art not fair for all thy red and white.”—These lines are printed in Dr. Grosart’s edition of Donne’s poems, vol. ii. p. 259. They are ascribed to Donne in an early MS.; but I see no reason for depriving Campion of them. (The first stanza is also set to music in Thomas Vautor’s “Airs,” 1619.)
Page [132]. “Though Amaryllis dance in green.”—Also printed in “England’s Helicon,” 1600.
Page [148]. “We must not part as others do.”—These lines are very much in Donne’s manner. The MS. from which they are taken (Egerton MS. 2013) contains some undoubted poems of Donne.
Page [151]. “Were I a king.”—Canon Hannah prints these verses (in his “Poems of Raleigh and Wotton,” p. 147) from a MS. copy, in which they are assigned to Edward Earl of Oxford. Appended in the MS. are the following answers:—
“Answered thus by Sir P. S.
Wert thou a king, yet not command content,
Sith empire none thy mind could yet suffice;
Wert thou obscure, still cares would thee torment;
But wert thou dead all care and sorrow dies.
An easy choice, of these three which to crave:
No kingdom, nor a cottage, but a grave.