Good honest verse, but ill-suited to these degenerate, tea-drinking days.
_Page_ 85. "Now I see thy looks were feignèd."--First printed in "The Ph[oe]nix Nest," 1593, subscribed "T. L. Gent," _i.e._ Thomas Lodge, one of the most brilliant of Elizabethan lyrists.
_Page_ 87. "Shall we play barley-break."--The fullest description of the rustic game of barley-break is to be found in the first book of Sidney's "Arcadia."
_Page_ 87. "Now let her change." This song is also set to Music in Robert Jones' "Ultimum Vale" (1608).
_Page_ 89. "Now what is love" &c.--This poem originally appeared in "The Ph[oe]nix Nest," 1593; it is also printed (in form of a dialogue) in "England's Helicon," 1600, and Davison's "Poetical Rhapsody," 1602. It is ascribed to Raleigh in a MS. list of Davison's. See Canon Hannah's edition of Raleigh's poems.
_Page_ 93. "Oft have I mused."--This poem was printed in Davison's "Poetical Rhapsody," 1602.
_Page_ 96. "Our country-swains in the morris-dance."--In Morley's "Madrigals to Four Voices," 1594, there is a lively description of the morris-dance:--
"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.