Drink To Me Only With Thine Eyes lyrics
by Johnny Cash
[Intro]
The reason I want to sing this next song is because it has so many and such a strong memory for me. I can see me when I was 17 years old standing in the end of the Dyess High School gymnasium at the senior class graduation. I was a junior at the time. The next year, I graduated. But I was a junior and they called on me to sing a "special", they called it, for the graduation, for the commencement exercises, so... I'm sorry, but I don't remember my piano player's name. It was a schoolteacher. She played the piano and I sang this song. This was- I guess this was when I was looking for myself. But I never forgot that because it was one of my first public singing occasions. And I've sung this song, mainly, to myself ever since I was 17 years old because of those memories. I suppose this song is Elizabethan. The words sound like the King James version of the Bible
[Chorus]
Drink to me only with thine eyes
And I will pledge with mine
Or leave a kiss within the cup
And I'll not ask for wine
The thirst that from the soul doth rise
Doth ask a drink divine
But might I of Jove's nectar sip
I would not change for thine
[Verse]
I sent thee late a rosy wreath
Not so much honoring thee
As giving it a hope that there
It could not withered be
But thou thereon didst only breathe
And sentst it back to me
Since when it grows and smells, I swear
Not of itself, but thee
[Chorus]
Drink to me only with thine eyes
And I will pledge with mine
Or leave a kiss within the cup
And I'll not ask for wine
The thirst that from the soul doth rise
Doth ask a drink divine
But might I of Jove's nectar sip
I would not change for thine