Hyperion Records

Another early song, published in 1681 in Playford and Carr’s third book of Choice Ayres, this setting was a three-verse, strophic one which divides each verse into two sections. The text, on the stock pastoral figure Amintor’s unreciprocated love for Clarissa, is full of double entendres, yet the over-riding sense of Purcell’s setting is that of melancholy.

from notes by Robert King © 2003