Origin Of 'bunny' Poem by Douglas Scotney

Now sidelined by 'rabbit'
and said to rhyme with 'bony',
originally,
'coney' rhymed with 'honey'.

It does so in Nicholas Breton's
'The Passionate Shepherd' of 1604 or so:
a bee gathers honey
and a little black-haired coney
finds a sunny place, on which,
with her fore-feet she washes her face.

For confirmation,
in my Chambers I sourced 'coney':
sure enough,
originally rhymed with 'bunny'.

Which had me thinking: 'Funny,
they didn't only change 'coney'
to rhyme it with 'bony';
they kept the rhyme with 'honey',
turned the 'o' into a 'u', added an 'n',
dropped the 'e',
and changed the 'c' to a 'b'.