58. A Pedlar
John Dowland's Second Book of Songs or Airs

Numbers from Elizabethan Miscellanies & Song-books by Unnamed or Uncertain Authors. 1600


FINE knacks for ladies! cheap, choice, brave, and new,
  Good pennyworths--but money cannot move:
I keep a fair but for the Fair to view--
  A beggar may be liberal of love.
Though all my wares be trash, the heart is true,
                    The heart is true.

Great gifts are guiles and look for gifts again;
  My trifles come as treasures from my mind:
It is a precious jewel to be plain;
  Sometimes in shell the orient'st pearls we find:--
Of others take a sheaf, of me a grain!
                    Of me a grain!

The Oxford Book of English Verse, HTML edition