Upon a hill the bonny boy
  Sweet Thyrsis sweetly played,
And called his lambs their master’s joy,
  And more he would have said;
But love that gives the lover wings
Withdrew his mind from other things.

His pipe and he could not agree,
  For Milla was his note;
The silly pipe could never get
  This lovely name by rote:
With that they both fell in a sound1,
He fell a-sleep, his pipe to ground.

View original text (without footnotes)
Lyrics from the Song-Books of the Elizabethan Age, ed. by A. H. Bullen, London, John C. Nimmo, 1887, pages 142-143.
¹ i.e., a swoon

Text Authorship:

• by Anonymous / Unidentified Author [author's text not yet checked against a primary source]

Musical settings (art songs, Lieder, mélodies, (etc.), choral pieces, and other vocal works set to this text), listed by composer (not necessarily exhaustive):

• by Thomas Weelkes (1576 - 1623), "Upon a hill, the bonny boy", published 1608 [three-part chorus a cappella], from the collection Ayres or Phantasticke Sprits for Three Voices, no. 5, Thomas Este, London [
   text verified 1 time
  ]

Researcher for this text: Emily Ezust [Administrator]

This text was added to the website: 2013-04-26
Line count: 12
Word count: 76