Lucasta; The Poems of Richard Lovelace/To Althea, from Prison

by Richard Lovelace

TO ALTHEA.

FROM PRISON.

SONG.

SET BY DR. JOHN WILSON.^[1]

I.

WHEN love with unconfined wings Hovers within my gates;And my divine Althea brings To whisper at the grates;When I lye tangled in her haire,^[2] And fetterd to her eye,^[3] The birds,^[4] that wanton in the aire, Know no such liberty.

II.

When flowing cups run swiftly round With no allaying Thames,Our carelesse heads with roses bound, Our hearts with loyal flames;When thirsty griefe in wine we steepe, ‘When healths and draughts go free,Fishes, that tipple in the deepe, Know no such libertie.

III.When (like committed linnets^[5]) I With shriller throat shall sing The sweetnes, mercy, majesty, And glories of my King.When I shall voyee aloud, how good He is, how great should be,Inlarged winds, that curle the flood, Know no such liberty.

IV.

Stone walls doe not a prison make, Nor iron bars a cage;Mindes innocent and quiet take That for an hermitage;If I have freedome in my love, And in my soule am free,Angels alone that sore above Enjoy such liberty.

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1. The first stanza of this famous song is harmonized in Cheerfull Ayres or Ballads; First composed for one single voice, and since set for three voices. By John Wilson, Dr. in Music, Professor of the same in the University of Oxford. Oxford, 1660 (Sept. 26, 1659), 4to.p. 10. I have sometimes thought that, when Lovelace composed this production, be had in his recollection some of the sentiments in Wither’s Shepherds Hunting, 1615. See, more particularly, the sonnet (at p. 243 of Mr. Gutch’s Bristol edition) commencing:—

   "I that er'st while the world’s sweet air did draw."

2. Peele, in King David and Fair Bethsabe, 1599, has a similar figure, where David says:—

   "Now comes my lover tripping like the roe,
   And brings my longings tangled in her hair."

   The "lover" is of course Bethsabe.

3. Thus Middleton, in his More Dissemblers besides Women, printed in 1657, but written before 1626, says:—
   "But for modesty,I should fall foul in words upon fond man,That can forget his excellence and honour,His serious meditations, being the endOf his creation, to learn well to die;And live a prisoner to a woman's eye."
   
4. Original reads gods; the present word is substituted in accordance with a MS. copy of the song printed by the late Dr. Bliss, in his edition of Woods Athenæ, If Dr. Bliss had been aware of the extraordinary corruptions under which the text of Lucasta laboured, he would have had less hesitation in adopting birds as the true reading. The “Song to Althea,” is a favourable specimen of the class of composition to which it belongs; but I fear that it has been over-estimated.
5. Percy very unnecessarily altered like committed linnets to linnet-like confined (Percy’s Reliques, ti. 247; Moxon’s ed.) Ellis (Specimens of Early English Poets, ed. 1801, iii. 252) says that this latter reading is "more intelligible." It is not, however, either what Lovelace wrote, or what (it may be presumed) he intended to write, and nothing, it would seem, can be clearer than the passage as it stands, committed signifying, in fact, nothing more than confined. It is fortunate for the lovers of early English literature that Bp. Percy had comparatively little to do with it, Emendation of a text is well enough; but the wholesale and arbitrary slaughter of it is quite another matter.