Ask me why I send you here This sweet Infanta of the year? Ask me why I send to you This Primrose, thus be-pearled with dew? I will whisper to your ears: The sweets of love are mix'd with tears. Ask me why [this]1 flow'r does show So yellow-green, and sickly too? Ask me why the stalk is weak And bending, yet it doth not break? I will answer: -- these discover What [doubts and fears]2 are in a lover.
Two Songs [1902]
by Frank Bridge (1879 - 1941)
1. The Primrose  [sung text checked 1 time]
Authorship:
- by Thomas Carew (1595? - 1639?)
- possibly by Robert Herrick (1591 - 1674)
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View original text (without footnotes)Confirmed with The Book of Elizabethan Verse, ed, by William Stanley Braithwaite, 1907. See also The Primrose by Robert Burns, which appears to be inspired by this poem.
1 Bridge: "the"2 Bridge: "fainting hopes"
Researcher for this page: Ted Perry
2. If I could choose  [sung text checked 1 time]
If I could choose my paradise, And please myself with choice of bliss, The I would have your soft blue eyes And rosy little mouth to kiss! Your lips, as smooth and tender, child, As rose leaves in a coppice wild. If fate bade choose some sweet unrest, To weave my troubled life a snare, Then I would say "Her maiden breast, And golden ripple of her hair;" And weep amid those tresses, child, Contented to be thus beguiled.
Authorship:
- by Thomas Ashe (1836 - 1889)
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Researcher for this page: Ted Perry