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In that case, surely the second line should be 'Would you have lain with me' if the past tense is being used.
Sorry, I should have been more precise. It's the past participle, not the past tense.
There are many types of past conditional sentences in English. Here are a few more examples:
https://www.englishpage.com/conditional/pastconditional.html
However, here the tense isn't actually the past, but the present. The tense of the whole sentence is determined by the main clause/the tense of the main clause (strictly speaking, the indicative in the subordinate clause doesn't have a tense--it hasn't happened, isn't happening, and may not happen, but the indicative is required because 'if' already carries the conditional sense, so adding a conditional form would be nonsense), i.e. the clause that has a subject and predicate and can therefore stand on its own.
'If I lay here' is incomplete and can't stand on its own (unless you wanted a thought to trail, for instance: 'If I lay here ...' (meaningful pause, wink, wink)) without a clause to complete it. 'Would you lie with me?' is a complete sentence in its own right and the subordinate clause depends on it.
Fun and games. :)
Oliver Schick-
(strictly speaking, the indicative in the subordinate clause doesn't have a tense--it hasn't happened, isn't happening, and may not happen, but the indicative is required because 'if' already carries the conditional sense, so adding a conditional form would be nonsense)
not sure i understand this. so an utterance like:
"if you would just let me finish, ..."
is nonsense?
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Upon reflection, I think that you (and Snow Patrol) are right. It's a past conditional usage of the verb 'to lie', much in the same way as it would work if you said 'If I ate my dinner at 8 this evening, would you eat with me?'.
I don't think it's a past participle though, I think it's the simple past tense being used. The past participle for the verb 'to lie', in this sense rather than the porky pie sense, is 'lain', as in 'He had lain on his bed all day'.
Bloody Snow Patrol!
fizzy.bleach
Brommers
In that case, surely the second line should be 'Would you have lain with me' if the past tense is being used.