No. 133
Warning and Welcome.
GRAVE moralist, with eyes a-squint,
And pucker'd mouth, pack hence! away!
Your heart is hard as any flint:
Avaunt! Love's feast is spread to-day.
And you, coy maiden, come not nigh,
Lest wanton rhyme assail your ears:
Wait till your chaste zone you untie
And Hymen put to flight your fears.
But, ho! all ye whose brisker veins
Glow with Dan Cupid's genial fire,
Post hitherwards, 'tis worth your pains,
And harken to our tuneful quire.
PREFACE.
In sending out this little anthology of seventeenth-century love-verses, I must say a few words by way of explanation or apology. Some eighteen months ago I published a collection of "Lyrics from the Song-books of the Elizabethan Age" (J. C. Nimmo), and recently I issued a second collection, "More Lyrics from the Song-books of the Elizabethan Age" (J. C. Nimmo). Those volumes were addressed to all classes of readers. They may lie on a drawing-room table without offence. Philemon may give them to his Amanda on her birthday with the full assurance that he will run no risk of bringing a blush to the fair nymph's cheek. I was careful to exclude from those collections any poems that passed the bounds of conventional propriety. In the seventeenth century those bounds were not so well defined as in the present age. John Attey, in 1622, dedicated his "First Book of Airs" to "The Right Honourable John, Earl of Bridgewater, Viscount Brackley, and Baron of Ellesmere; and the truly Noble and Virtuous Lady, Frances, Countess of Bridgewater." Among Attey's songs are the audacious verses, "My days, my months, my years," which I have given in the present collection (page [15]). A noble and virtuous lady now-a-days would be justly incensed if she found such a lyric in a song-book of which she had accepted the dedication; but we may be sure that John Attey's patroness did not withdraw her favour from the composer, or express herself shocked at his temerity. Manners have changed, and "My days, my months, my years" is no longer a song for the drawing-room; but snugly stowed away with its fellows on a top shelf in the library it can do no harm.