My true love hath my heart, and I have his,
By just exchange one for another given:
I hold his dear, and mine he cannot miss,
There never was a better bargain driven:
My true love hath my heart, and I have his.
His heart in me keeps him and me in one,
My heart in him his thoughts and senses guides:
He loves my heart, for once it was his own,
I cherish his because in me it bides:
My true love hath my heart, and I have his.
About the headline (FAQ)
View text with all available footnotesConfirmed with Francis T. Palgrave, ed. (1824-1897), The Golden Treasury., 1875, as "A ditty"
Note: parodied in Archibald Stodart-Walker's My true friend hath my hat.
Note: Somervell's setting has several changes to the punctuation (as supplied by Mike Pearson):
Line One: No first comma
Line Three: No first comma
Line Five: No first comma
Line Seven: Full stop not colon
Line Eight: Full stop not colon
Line Ten: No first comma
Text Authorship:
Musical settings (art songs, Lieder, mélodies, (etc.), choral pieces, and other vocal works set to this text), listed by composer (not necessarily exhaustive):
- by Vivian Fine (1913 - 2000), "The bargain", 1938, first performed 1941 [ soprano or mezzo-soprano and piano ], from Four Elizabethan Songs, no. 4 [sung text checked 1 time]
- by Hans Gál (1890 - 1987), "True love", op. 51 no. 2 (1939), published 1949 [ SATB chorus a cappella ], from Four Madrigals, no. 2, Novello, London [sung text checked 1 time]
- by Charles Hubert Hastings Parry, Sir (1848 - 1918), "My true love hath my heart", 1881-3, published 1885 [ voice and piano ], from English Lyrics, First Set, no. 1 [sung text checked 1 time]
- by (Gerald) Graham Peel (1878 - 1937), "The bargain", from Two Songs of Friendship, no. 1 [sung text not yet checked]
- by Arthur Somervell, Sir (1863 - 1937), "My true love hath my heart" [ voice and piano ] [sung text checked 1 time]
Set in a modified version by Samuel Hans Adler, Doreen Carwithen, Madeleine Dring, Arthur Foote, Charles Gounod, Jake Heggie, Gustav Holst, William Martin Yeates Hurlstone, John Ireland, Andrzej Panufnik, John Theodore Livingston Raynor, John Milford Rutter, CBE, Arthur Somervell, Sir, Stephen Wilkinson.
Researcher for this page: Emily Ezust [Administrator]
This text was added to the website: 2011-04-26
Line count: 10
Word count: 93