Annotation:Gentle Love

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GENTLE LOVE. AKA - "Gentle love this hour befriend me." English, Air (whole time). D Major. Standard tuning (fiddle). AABB. The song was composed by Aaron Hill, Esq., an antagonist of Pope, and a poet and dramatist who died in 1749. The song appears in Simpson's The Delightful Pocket Companion vol. 2 (c. 1750), Lewers Amaryllis, 2nd Ed., vols 1 & 2 In One (1760), and Ritson's Select Collection of English Songs (1783). Hill's lyric begins:

Gentle Love, this hour befriend me,
To my eyes resign thy dart;
Notes of melting music lend me,
To dislove a frozen heart.

Chill, as mountain snow, her bosom;
Though I tender language use,
'Tis by cold indifference frozen,
To my arms, and to my muse.

See! my dying eyes are pleading,
Where a breaking heart appears;
For thy pity interceding,
With the eloquence of tears.

While the lamp of life is fading,
And beneath they coldness dies,
Death my ebbing pulse invading,
Take my soul into thy eyes.

Source for notated version:

Printed sources: Oswald (Caledonian Pocket Companion, Book 8), 1760; p. 18.

Recorded sources:

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