I Give Thee All (My Heart and Lute)

DESCRIPTION: "I give thee all -- I can no more -- Though poor the off'ring be; My heart and lute are all the store That I can bring to thee." "Though love and song may fail, alas! To keep life's clouds away, At least will let them lighter pass."
AUTHOR: Words: Thomas Moore (1779-1852) / Music: Sir Henry Rowley Bishop
EARLIEST DATE: 1856 (_The Poetical Works of Thomas Moore_, 1856 edition)
KEYWORDS: love music
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REFERENCES (1 citation):
ADDITIONAL: [Thomas Moore], _The Poetical Works of Thomas Moore: A New Edition_, 1856 (available on Google Books), p. 345, "My Heart and Lute" (1 text)
NOTES [266 words]: I am including this on the thinnest of thin speculations. The poem "My Heart and Lute" is by Thomas Moore -- but it is not one of his more popular pieces. It is not found in the 1846 edition of Moore's Irish Melodies, and although Granger's Index to Poetry catalogs about a hundred Moore poems, this isn't one of them. I know of no traditional collections. Obviously it has been nearly forgotten.
But we know that this is the tune Lewis Carroll meant to use for the White Knight's Song ("Haddock's Eyes," etc.). Obviously Carroll knew it, and obviously he thought the Liddells knew it too. The context seems to imply that Carroll thought it a rather folk-like song. Given the importance of the White Knight's song, and the preceding discussion of names, I'm including the song because, even if it isn't traditional, it's IMPORTANT.
(Although the tune for Carroll's piece is this, Sidney Herbert Williams and Falconer Madan, revised and augmented by Roger Lancelyn Green, further revised by Denis Crutch, The Lewis Carroll Handbook (earlier editions titled A Handbook of the Literature of the Rev. C. L. Dodgson, 1932, 1961, 1970); Dawson Books, 1979, p. 313, say that the words are a distant paraphrase of Wordsworth's 1807 poem "Reolution and Independence, or the Leech-Gatherer," and that Dodgson had published an earlier version of the poem in 1856).
It is interesting that the White Knight claimed the tune as his own invention, although Alice at once knew it was not. It's almost as if Carroll anticipated the dubious copyright claims of early twentieth century songwriters.... - RBW
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