The Penguin Book of English Song
Page 16
Nothing can make her,
The Devill take her!
(Arne, Parry, Quilter, Rubbra, C. Scott, Stanford, Wood)
ROGER QUILTER: from Five Jacobean Lyrics, Op. 28 (1926)
A poem, with the Answer. Sir J.S.
[The constant lover] (1925)1
I
Out upon it, I have lov’d
Three whole days together;
And am like to love three more,
If it hold fair weather.
II
Time shall moult away his wings,
Ere he shall discover
In the whole wide world agen
Such a constant Lover.
III
But a pox upon’t, no praise
Is due at all to me:
Love with me had made no stay,
Had it any been but she.
IV
Had it any been but she,
And that very very Face,
There had been at least ere this
A dozen dozen in her place.
(Henry Lawes, Moeran, Stanford)
RICHARD LOVELACE
(1618–58)
The Ayre’s already tainted with the swarms
Of Insects which against you rise in arms.
Word-peckers, Paper-rats, Book-scorpions,
Of wit corrupted, the unfashion’d Sons.
The barbed Censurers begin to looke
Like the grim consistory on the Booke;
And on each line cast a reforming eye,
Severer then the young Presbytery.
Till when in vaine they have thee all perus’d,
You shall for being faultlesse be accus’d.
Some reading your Lucasta, will alledge
You wrong’d in her the Houses Priviledge.
Some that you under sequestration are,
Because you write when going to the Warre,
And one the Book prohibits, because Kent
Their first Petition by the Authour sent.
ANDREW MARVELL: ‘To his Noble Friend Mr. Richard Lovelace, upon his poems’ (1649)
Educated at Charterhouse and Gloucester Hall, Oxford, Lovelace was extremely wealthy and, having left Oxford, became a courtier, serving in the Scottish expeditions of 1639. He was thrown into the Gatehouse Prison for presenting a ‘Kentish Petition’ to the House of Commons in 1642, where he was said to have written ‘To Althea, from prison’. The petition demanded ‘that the militia might not be otherwise exercised in that county than the known law permitted, and that the Book of Common Prayer established by law might be observed’. Lovelace rejoined Charles I in 1645, served with the French king in 1646 and was wounded at Dunkirk. Two years later he was imprisoned once more, during which time he prepared his Lucasta: Epodes, Odes, Sonnets, Songs, etc. for publication. Like Suckling, he served in the Bishops’ Wars. He spent his entire fortune in support of the Royalist cause, and, according to Anthony à Wood, died wretchedly in Gunpowder Alley, London. He was a patron of the arts and associated with the poet Andrew Marvell (see Marvell’s poem), the painter Peter Lely and the composer Henry Lawes. Marvell’s poem hints at the neglect into which Lovelace’s poetry had fallen (‘The Ayre’s already tainted with the swarms/Of Insects which against you rise in arms’), and it was only in the second half of the eighteenth century that interest in his work was rekindled, after Percy had printed two of his poems (‘To Althea, from prison’ and ‘To Lucasta, Going to the Warres’) in his Reliques (1765).
HUBERT PARRY: from English Lyrics III (1895)
To Lucasta, Going to the Warres
[To Lucasta]1
I
Tell me not (Sweet) I am unkinde,
That from the Nunnerie
Of thy chaste breast, and quiet minde,
To Warre and Armes I flie.2
II
True; a new Mistresse now I chase,
The first Foe in the Field;
And with a stronger Faith imbrace
A Sword, a Horse, a Shield.
III
Yet this Inconstancy is such,
As you too shall adore;
I could not love thee (Deare) so much,
Lov’d I not Honour more.
(Laniere, Somervell)
To Althea, from prison1
I
When Love with unconfined wings
Hovers within my Gates;
And my divine Althea brings
To whisper at the Grates:
When I lye tangled in her haire,
Or fetterd to her eye;
The Gods2 that wanton3 in the Aire,
Know no such Liberty.
II
When flowing Cups run swiftly round
With no allaying Thames,
Our carelesse heads with Roses bound,
Our hearts with Loyall Flames;
When thirsty griefe in Wine we steepe,
And Healths and draughts go free,
Fishes, that tipple in the Deepe,
Know no such Libertie.
III
[When (like committed Linnets) I
With shriller throat shall sing
The sweetnes, Mercy, Majesty,
And glories of my KING;
When I shall voyce aloud, how Good
He is, how Great should be,
Inlarged Winds that curle the Flood,
Know no such Liberty.]
IV
Stone Walls do not a Prison make,
Nor I’ron bars a Cage;
Mindes innocent and quiet take
That for an Hermitage;
If I have freedome in my Love,
And in my soule am free;
Angels alone that soar above,
Injoy such Liberty.
(Quilter, Wilson)
WILLIAM DENIS BROWNE
Gratiana dauncing and singing
[To Gratiana dancing and singing] (1913/1923)1
I
See! with what constant Motion
Even, and glorious, as the Sunne,
Gratiana steers that Noble Frame.
Soft as her breast, sweet as her voyce
That gave each winding Law and poyze,
And swifter then the wings of Fame.
II
[She beat the happy Pavement
By such a Starre made Firmament,
Which now no more the Roofe envies;
But swells up high with Atlas ev’n,
Bearing the brighter, nobler Heav’n,
And in her, all the Dieties.]
III
Each step trod out a Lovers thought
And the Ambitious hopes he brought,
Chain’d to her brave feet with such arts,
Such sweet command, and gentle awe,
As when she ceas’d, we sighing saw
The floor lay pav’d with broken hearts.
IV
So did she move; so did she sing
Like the Harmonious spheres that bring
Unto their Rounds their musick’s ayd;
Which she performed such a way,
As all th’inamoured world will say
The Graces danced, and Apollo play’d.
ANDREW MARVELL
(1621–78)
He was of middling stature, pretty strong sett, roundish faced, cherry cheek’t, hazell eie, browne haire. He was in his conversation very modest, and of very few words: and though he loved wine he would never drinke hard in company, and was wont to say that, he would not play the good-fellow in any man’s company in whose hands he would not trust his life. He had not a generall acquaintance. […] He kept bottles of wine at his lodgeing, and many times he would drinke liberally by himselfe to refresh his spirits, and exalt his Muse. (I remember I have been told that the learned Goclenius (an High-German) was wont to keep bottells of good Rhenish-wine in his studie, and, when his spirits wasted, he would drinke a good Rummer of it.)
JOHN AUBREY: Brief Lives (c.1693)
The son of a clergyman, Marvell was educate
d at Hull Grammar School and Trinity College, Cambridge – he was awarded a BA in 1638/9 but left in 1641 without a higher degree. At the outbreak of the Civil War in 1642, he declined to commit fully to either side, and spent several years travelling on the continent. Although he entertained Royalist sympathies, he wrote ‘An Horatian Ode upon Cromwell’s Return from Ireland’, and was soon tutoring the daughter of the recently retired Parliamentary general Lord Fairfax at the latter’s house in Nun Appleton, Yorkshire, where he wrote several of his poems. Milton recommended him for the post of Assistant Latin Secretary to the government in 1653, which he assumed in 1657, by which time he had been appointed tutor to one of Cromwell’s wards. His poem on ‘The First Anniversary of the Government under Oliver Cromwell’ showed where his political sympathies now lay. He was elected to Parliament as a member for Hull (Aubrey wrote that ‘his native towne of Hull loved him so well that they elected him for their representative in Parliament, and gave him an honourable pension to maintaine him’) and spoke frequently in the House in favour of religious toleration.
As a writer, Marvell resists classification. According to Aubrey, Rochester called Marvell ‘the only man in England that had the true veine of Satyre’ – he wrote a number of witty satires, the best of which, ‘Last Instructions to a Painter’ (1667), reveals the extent of financial and sexual corruption at court and in Parliament; and several of his works in prose speak out against intolerance (The Second Part of the Rehearsall Transpros’d, 1673, Mr. Smirke: or, The Divine in Mode, 1676, and An Account of the Growth of Popery, and Arbitrary Government, 1677). His poetry has been described, unhelpfully, as Metaphysical, Mannerist and Puritan. He is, perhaps, at his idiosyncratic best when describing nature, as in ‘Bermudas’, ‘The Mower against Gardens’, ‘The Mower to the Glow-Worms’ and ‘The Garden’. Most of his poems were published in folio as Miscellaneous Poems, three years after his death. Until the beginning of the nineteenth century he was remembered chiefly as a writer who spoke out against political and religious intolerance; his reputation as a lyric poet increased during the nineteenth century, and he is now regarded as one of the most original poets in the English language.
RICHARD RODNEY BENNETT
The Mower to the Glo-Worms
[Glow-Worms] (1966)
I
Ye living Lamps, by whose dear light
The Nightingale does sit so late,
And studying all the Summer-night,
Her matchless Songs does meditate;
II
Ye Country Comets, that portend
No War, nor Prince’s funeral,
Shining unto no higher end
Then to presage the Grasses fall;
III
Ye Glo-worms, whose officious Flame
To wandring Mowers shows the way,
That in the Night have lost their aim,
And after foolish Fires do stray;
IV
Your courteous Lights in vain you wast,
Since Juliana here is come,
For She my Mind hath so displac’d
That I shall never find my home.
Bermudas
[The Bermudas]
for choir and orchestra (1974)1
Where the remote Bermudas ride2
In th’Oceans bosome unespy’d,
From a small Boat, that row’d along,
The listning Winds receiv’d this Song.
What should we do but sing his Praise
That led us through the watry Maze,
Unto an Isle so long unknown,
And yet far kinder than our own?
Where he the huge Sea-Monsters wracks,
That lift the Deep upon their Backs.
He lands us on a grassy Stage;
Safe from the Storms, and Prelat’s rage.
He gave us this eternal Spring,
Which here enamells every thing;
And sends the Fowl’s to us in care,
On daily Visits through the Air.
He hangs in shades the Orange bright,
Like golden Lamps in a green3 Night.
And does in the Pomgranates close,
Jewels more rich than Ormus4 show’s.
He makes the Figs our mouths to meet;
And throws the Melons at our feet.
But Apples5 plants of such a price,
No Tree could ever bear them twice.
With Cedars, chosen by his hand,
From Lebanon, he stores the Land.
And makes the hollow Seas, that roar,
Proclaime the Ambergris6 on shoar.
He cast (of which we rather boast)
The Gospels Pearl upon our Coast.
And in these Rocks for us did frame
A Temple, where to sound his Name.
Oh let our Voice his Praise exalt,
Till it arrive at Heavens Vault:
Which thence (perhaps) rebounding, may,
Eccho beyond the Mexique Bay.
Thus sung they, in the English boat,
An holy and a chearful Note,
And all the way, to guide their Chime,
With falling Oars they kept the time.
PIERS HELLAWELL
The fair singer
[Fatal harmony] (1993)
To make a final conquest of all me,
Love did compose so sweet an Enemy,
In whom both Beauties to my death agree,
Joyning themselves in fatal Harmony;
That while she with her Eyes my Heart does bind,
She with her Voice might captivate my Mind.
I could have fled from One but singly fair:
My dis-intangled Soul it self might save,
Breaking the curled trammels of her hair.
But how should I avoid to be her Slave,
Whose subtile Art invisibly can wreath
My Fetters of the very Air I breath?
It had been easy fighting in some plain,
Where Victory might hang in equal choice.
But all resistance against her is vain,
Who has th’advantage both of Eyes and Voice.
And all my Forces needs must be undone,
She having gained both the Wind and Sun.
JOHN BUNYAN
(1628–88)
The Pilgrim’s Progress is composed in the lowest style of English, without slang or false grammar. If you were to polish it, you would at once destroy the reality of the vision. For works of the imagination should be written in very plain language; the more purely imaginative they are the more necessary it is to be plain.
This wonderful work is one of the few books which may be read over repeatedly at different times, and each time with a new and a different pleasure. I read it once as a theologian – and let me assure you, that there is a great theological acumen in the work – once with devotional feelings – and once as a poet. I could not have believed beforehand that Calvinism could be painted in such exquisitely delightful colours.
SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE: Table Talk (1836)
Born at Elstow, Bedfordshire, Bunyan was the son of a tinker, learned to read and write at the village school, and intended to follow his father’s trade. He was drafted into Cromwell’s army during the Civil War and stationed at Newport Pagnell. In 1649 he married his first wife, who introduced him to Dent’s Plain Man’s Pathway to Heaven and Bayly’s Practice of Piety, which, with Fox’s Book of Martyrs, exercised a decisive influence on him. After the Civil War he returned to Elstow as a brazier and became an itinerant Independent preacher. When anti-nonconformist laws were introduced at the restoration of the monarchy, he was arrested in November 1660 and spent most of the next twelve years in Bedford Gaol, where he wrote Grace Abounding to the Chief of Sinners (1666), The Holy City, or The New Jerusalem (1665) and A Confession of My Faith, and a Reason of My Practice (1672) and began The Pilgrim’s Progress. He was released in 1672 but imprisoned once more for a short period in 1676, when he finished The Pilgrim’s Progress, the first part of whi
ch was published in 1678, and the second part in 1684. He had four children by his first wife, who died in c.1656, shortly after which he married for the second time.
‘MONK’S GATE’
Valiant-for-Truth’s song
[Who would true Valour see]1
Who would true Valour see,
Let him come hither;
One here will Constant be,
Come Wind, come Weather.
There’s no Discouragement
Shall make him once Relent
His first avow’d Intent
To be a Pilgrim.
Who so beset him round
With dismal Storys,
Do but themselves Confound;
His Strength the more is.
No Lyon can him fright,
He’l with a Gyant Fight:
But he will have a right,2
To be a Pilgrim.
Hobgoblin, nor foul Fiend3
Can daunt his Spirit:
He knows, he at the end,
Shall Life inherit.
Then Fancies fly away,
He’l fear not what men say,
He’l labour Night and Day,
To be a Pilgrim.
RALPH VAUGHAN WILLIAMS: from The Pilgrim’s Progress (1951)
Vaughan Williams called his The Pilgrim’s Progress a Morality in a prologue, four acts and an epilogue. He fashioned the libretto himself, basing it on Bunyan, with interpolations from the Bible and verse by his wife, Ursula. The work preoccupied him for over forty years, beginning in 1906, when he wrote incidental music for a semi-professional stage adaptation in Reigate. The one-act episode The Shepherds of the Delectable Mountains, composed in 1921, was later incorporated into the finished opera as Act IV, sc. ii. He worked on Acts I and II between 1925 and 1936, temporarily abandoned the project, and used a few of the themes in his Fifth Symphony, which was premiered in 1943. His enthusiasm for the opera had been rekindled the previous year, during which he wrote thirty-eight sections of incidental music for a BBC dramatization by Edward Sackville-West – some of which was incorporated in the final operatic version on which he worked from 1944 to 1949, and 1951 to 1952. The work was premiered at Covent Garden on 26 April 1951, as part of the Festival of Britain. It was not well received, and Vaughan Williams declared: ‘They don’t like it, they won’t like it and perhaps they never will like it, but it’s the sort of opera I wanted to write, and there it is.’ Vaughan Williams, who was an agnostic, referred throughout to Christian as Pilgrim, ‘because I want the idea to be universal and to apply to anybody who aims at the spiritual life whether he is Christian, Jew, Buddhist, Shintoist or Fifth Day Adventist’.