"My father had no girl but me, And yet he sent me off to sea;Leap, my little Cecilia."
Or perhaps it was:
"I've danced so much the livelong day,--
Dance, my sweetheart, let's be gay,--
I've fairly danced my shoes away,--
Till evening.
Dance, my pretty, dance once more;
Dance, until we break the floor."
But more frequently the song was touched with a plaintive pleasant melancholy. The minstrel told how he had gone into the woods and heard the nightingale, and she had confided to him that lovers are often unhappy. The story of La Belle Francoise was repeated in minor cadences--how her sweetheart sailed away to the wars, and when he came back the village church bells were ringing, and he said to himself that Francoise had been faithless, and the chimes were for her marriage; but when he entered the church it was her funeral that he saw, for she had died of love. It is strange how sorrow charms us when it is distant and visionary. Even when we are happiest we enjoy making music "Of old, unhappy, far-off things.""What is that song which you are singing, Ferdinand?" asks the lady, as she hears him humming behind her in the canoe.
