"Drink to Me Only With Thine Eyes" is a popular old song, the lyrics of which are English playwright Ben Jonson's 1616 poem "Song. To Celia."
John Addington Symonds demonstrated in The Academy 16 (1884) that almost every line has its counterpart in “Epistle xxxiii” of the erotic love-letter Epistles of Philostratus, The Athenian. Richard Cumberland had, however, identified the link to "an obscure collection of love-letters" by Philostratus as early as 1791. George Burke Johnston noted that "the poem is not a translation, but a synthesis of scattered passages. Although only one conceit is not borrowed from Philostratus, the piece is a unified poem, and its glory is Jonson's. It has remained alive and popular for over three hundred years, and it is safe to say that no other work by Jonson is so well known." Another classical strain in the poem derives from Catullus. In a brief notice J. Gwyn Griffiths noted the similarity of the conceit of perfume given to the rosy wreath in a poem in the Greek Anthology and other classical parallels could be attested, natural enough in a writer of as wide reading as Jonson.
Willa McClung Evans suggested that Jonson's lyrics were fitted to a tune already in existence and that the fortunate marriage of words to music accounted in part for its excellence. This seems unlikely since Jonson's poem was set to an entirely different melody in 1756 by Elizabeth Turner. Another conception is that the original composition of the tune was by John Wall Callcott in about 1790 as a glee for two trebles and a bass. It was arranged as a song in the 19th century, apparently by Colonel Mellish (1777-1817). Later arrangements include those by Granville Bantock and Roger Quilter. Quilter's setting was included in the Arnold Book of Old Songs, published in 1950.
Versions and uses
Sir Walter Scott used the tune for another song, "County Guy".It appears as an arrangement by Theo Marzials in 'Pan pipes: A book of old songs' (1883).The song was very frequently performed in American student musical performances in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. In liner notes, Johnny Cash says that this song was one of the first that he ever sang at a public engagement — at commencement exercise when a high school junior. (A version of the song was recorded privately by Cash at his home recording studio and released posthumously on the album Personal File.) Cash previously recorded a song called "Drink To Me," loosely based on this song.Kenneth Williams sings the song briefly in Carry on Screaming.Hyacinth Bucket (Patricia Routledge) drunkenly sings the song in one episode of Keeping Up Appearances.In 1926, Gwen Farrar (1899-1944) performed the song in a short film made in the Phonofilm sound-on-film process.The song features unflatteringly in the 1936 Merrie Melodies short subject I Love to Singa as the selection young "Owl Jolson's" parents force him to perform in his lessons rather than the title number much to his chagrin and dismay. Warner Bros., which distributed (and later produced) the Merrie Melodies series (and sister series Looney Tunes), would later use this song as incidental music in the TV series Baby Looney Tunes, particularly when one of the characters is drinking milk, water or juice, or even pretending to drink tea.The song was performed by Paul Robeson in his album "Ballad for Americans and Great Songs of Faith, Love and Patriotism", Vanguard Records.The song is sung by the East Side Kids in a wedding scene in the 1943 film Ghosts on the Loose.The song is also sung in a comedic manner by Lou Costello in the 1946 Abbott & Costello film The Time of Their Lives.Duke Special recorded a version of the song as a B-Side for the single "Freewheel" with Neil Hannon of The Divine Comedy.The song was performed by Swans in their album Various Failures.The song was used briefly in a 1986 episode of the TV series Tales from the Darkside.Rabindranath Tagore, the Nobel Prize-winning Indian poet, adapted the tune in his poem "Katabar Bhebechinu." A popular Bengali vocalist Swagatalakhsmi Dasgupta sang both the versions.The song comes to the Martian Ylla, in a dream, in Ray Bradbury's Martian Chronicles (1950).The song was performed by Sherwood in their album The Favourite Songs of Henry VIII.Laura Wright recorded a version, featured on her album The Last Rose (2011).George Eliot refers to this song in her novel, The Mill on The Floss, Book 6, Chapter 13, as being sung by character Stephen Guest.