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

Songs and Their Settings: What Maids Lack

From the ‘Winter’s Tale’

Enter Autolycus, singing

LAWN, as white as driven snow;

Cyprus, black as e’er was crow;

Gloves, as sweet as damask roses;

Masks for faces, and for noses;

Bugle-bracelet, necklace amber,

Perfume for a lady’s chamber;

Golden quoifs, and stomachers,

For my lads to give their dears;

Pins and poking-sticks of steel,

What maids lack from head to heel:

Come, buy of me, come; come buy, come buy,

Buy, lads, or else your lasses cry:

Come, buy.

Will you buy any tape,

Or lace for your cape,

My dainty duck, my dear-a?

Any silk, any thread,

Any toys for your head,

Of the new’st, and fin’st, fin’st wear-a?

Come to the peddler;

Money’s a meddler,

That doth utter all men’s ware-a.