If any excuse is necessary for another setting of this well-known poem, of which there are aleady a number by other composers, it is that when I first came across it and wrote the melody, I had not as yet seen it in any of the many anthologies in which it appears. I first came across it in a little book of poems by Henry Kirke White, who lived from 1785 to 1806. He quoted it and added his own final somewhat sententious stanza, urging the young girl to whom it is addressed, to be virtuous. Needless to say I have not set that verse.