C.D. Warner, et al., comp. The Library of the World’s Best Literature.
An Anthology in Thirty Volumes. 1917.

Song: ‘I would I were an English rose’

From ‘Francis Drake’

I WOULD I were an English rose,

In England for to be:

The sweetest maid that Devan knows

Should pick and carry me.

To pluck my leaves be tender quick,

A fortune fair to prove,

And count in love’s arithmetic

Thy pretty sum of love.

Oh, Devon’s lanes be green o’ergrown,

And blithe her maidens be;

But there be some that walk alone,

And look across the sea.