Drink to Me Only
Composer:
Traditional
Genre: World / Folk
Decade: before 1923
Submitted by: Russell Ambrose
Description:
From Wikipedia:
"Drink to Me Only With Thine Eyes" is a popular English song, set to the lyrics of Ben Jonson`s 1616[1] poem "Song. To Celia." John Addington Symonds demonstrated in The Academy 16 (1884) that almost every line has its counterpart in the Epistles of Philostratus,[2] notably Epistle xxx. Richard Cumberland had, however, identified the link to "an obscure collection of love-letters" by Philostratus as early as 1791.[3] George Burke Johnston noted that "the poem is not a translation, but a synthesis of scattered passages. Although only one conceit is not borrowed from Philostratus, the piece is a unified poem, and its glory is Jonson`s. It has remained alive and popular for over three hundred years, and it is safe to say that no other work by Jonson is so well known."[4] Another classical strain in the poem derives from Catullus.[5] In a brief notice J. Gwyn Griffiths noted the similarity of the conceit of perfume given to the rosy wreath in a poem in the Greek Anthology[6] and other classical parallels could be attested, natural enough in a writer of as wide reading as Jonson.
by: Russell Ambrose