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The National Music of America. 209
Scottish meat-pudding, — the Haggis, — and sweep from this up to the loftiest declaration of human rights and equality, in —
" Rank is but the guinea's stamp, The man's the gowd, for a' that."
Dibdin, although unable to scale such heights, was entirely adequate to the idealisation of the humble surroundings of sailor-life. What subject could be more humble than a sailor's tobacco-box, with a simple motto scratched on it by his sweetheart ? Yet this became, when gilded by the poet's fancy, the beautiful song, " The Token," with its refrain
of —
"If you loves I as I loves you No knife shall cut our loves in two." l
The sailor is more constantly at song than the soldier, and it is not surprising to find the sea-songs of both America and England more full of power than the songs of the
1 The last line is frequently softened into " No pair so happy as we two." |
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