No More Learning

It would not be difficult to defend either version. The only variation
from the printed text which I have admitted is that on which all the
MSS. are unanimous, viz. 'first' for 'short' in l. 26; 'short' is an
obvious blunder.


NOTE ON THE MUSIC TO WHICH CERTAIN OF DONNE'S SONGS WERE SET.

A song meant for the Elizabethans a poem intended to be sung,
generally to the accompaniment of the lute. Donne had clearly no
thought of his songs being an exception to this rule:

But when I have done so,
Some man his art and voice to show
Doth set and sing my paine.

Yet it is difficult to think of some, perhaps the majority, of Donne's
_Songs and Sonets_ as being written to be sung. Their sonorous and
rhetorical rhythm, the elaborate stanzas which, like the prolonged
periods of the _Elegies_, seem to give us a foretaste of the Miltonic
verse-paragraph, suggest speech,--impassioned, rhythmical speech
rather than the melody of song. We are not haunted by a sense of the
tune to which the song should go, as we are in reading the lyrics of
the Elizabethan Anthologies or of Robert Burns. Yet some of Donne's
songs _were_ set to music. A note in one group of MSS. describes three
of them as 'Songs which were made to certain ayres which were made
before'. One of these is _The Baite_, which must have been set to
the same air as Marlowe's song.
I reproduce here a lute-accompaniment
found in William Corkine's _Second Book of Ayres_ (1612). The airs of
the other two (see p. 18) I have not been able to find, nor are they
known to Mr. Barclay Squire, who has kindly helped and guided me in
this matter of the music. With his aid I have reproduced here the
music of two other songs, and, at another place, that of one of
Donne's great _Hymns_.


PAGE =8=. SONG.

The following air is found in Egerton MS. 2013. As given here it has
been conjecturally corrected by Mr. Barclay Squire:

[Music:

Go and catch a falling star
Get with child a mandrake roote,
Tell me where all past times are
Or who cleft the Devil's foot,
Teach me to hear mermaid's singing
Or to keep of Envy's singing
And find
what wind
Serves to advance an honest mind. ]


PAGE =23=. BREAKE OF DAY.

This is set to the following air in Corkine's _Second Book of Ayres_
(1612). As given here it has been transcribed by Mr. Barclay Squire,
omitting the lute accompaniment:

[Music:

'Tis true 'tis day, What though it be?