Note 1. From Christ Church MS., and first printed in Bullen’s More Lyrics from Elizabethan Song-Books, 1888. It was set to music by Thomas Ford. [back]
Note 2. Lines 7–18. Of these lines Mr. Bullen writes: “The detailed description made by a loyal subject for the entertainment of his earthly king is singularly impressive. Few could have dealt with common household objects—tables and chairs and candles and the rest—in so dignified a spirit.” It would be interesting to compare these lines of Mr. Bullen’s enthusiastic praise with that other marvellously poetical description of common objects in Tennyson’s The Revival, in The Day-Dream, beginning:
A touch, a kiss! the charm was snapt.
There was a sound of striking clocks, etc.
Mr. Bullen is of the opinion that Henry Vaughan, the Silurist, is the author of this poem. “I know no other devotional poet who could have written it,” he says. But as Prof. Schelling points out that Vaughan’s earliest published work is dated 1650, two years after the death of Ford, who died a very old man, the assignation seems without probability. [back]
