The Mudcat Café TM
Thread #48138   Message #721375
Posted By: Dicho (Frank Staplin)
01-Jun-02 - 11:18 PM
Thread Name: Lyr/Chords: Farewell, Ye Green Fields and Groves
Subject: Lyr Add: FAREWELL, YE GREEN FIELDS AND GROVES
Lyr. Add: Farewell Ye Green Fields and Groves (Phillis?)

Farewell ye green fields and sweet groves
Where Phillis engaged my fond heart
Where nightingales warble their loves
And nature is dressed without art.

No pleasure they now can afford,
Nor music can lull me to rest
For Phillis proves false to her word
And Strephon can never be blest.

Oft times by the side of a spring
Where roses and lillies appear
Gay Phillis of Strophon would sing
For Strophon was all she held dear.

So soon as the sound by my eyes,
The passion that glow'd in my breast
She then to my grief and surprize
Prov'd all she said was a jest.

Too soon to my sorrow I find
The beauties alone that will last
Are those that are fixt in the mind
Which envy or time cannot blast.

Beware, then, beware who ye trust
Coquets(?) who to love make pretense
For Phillis to me* had been just
If nature had blest her with sense.

This is the broadside in the Bodleian, cited above by Masato as Harding B22 (370), no title but found as Farewell ye. I have kept the spellings. * If "would" inserted here, it makes more sense. A couple of words were blotted and are marked (?) The use of the old "s" letter suggests that it is not later than about 1820.
Doesn't seem to be much that is "Peasant," as the later subtitle to Bach's Cantata 212 would suggest.