Œn. My Love can pipe, my Love can sing,
My Love can many a pretty thing,
And of his lovely praises ring
My merry, merry, merry roundelays
Amen to Cupid’s Curse:
They that do change old love for new,
Pray Gods they change for worse.
Both. {
Fair, and fair, &c.
Fair, and fair, &c.
} (repeated.)
Both:
Fair, and fair, &c.
Fair, and fair, &c.
Repeated.
To my esteemed Friend, and excellent Musician, V. N., Esq.
Dear Sir,
I conjure you in the name of all the Sylvan Deities, and of the Muses, whom you honour, and they reciprocally love and honour you,—rescue this old and passionate Ditty—the very flower of an old forgotten Pastoral, which had it been in all parts equal, the Faithful Shepherdess of Fletcher had been but a second name in this sort of Writing——rescue it from the profane hands of every common Composer: and in one of your tranquillest moods, when you have most leisure from those sad thoughts, which sometimes unworthily beset you; yet a mood, in itself not unallied to the better sort of melancholy; laying by for once the lofty Organ, with which you shake the Temples; attune, as to the Pipe of Paris himself, to some milder and more love-according instrument, this pretty Courtship between Paris and his (then-not as yet-forsaken) Œnone. Oblige me; and all more knowing Judges of Music and of Poesy; by the adaptation of fit musical numbers, which it only wants to be the rarest Love Dialogue in our language.