The Penguin Book of English Song

by Richard Stokes

  Goethe’s celebrated poem ‘Kennst du das Land’, which appears in Wilhelm Meister (both the Theatralische Sendung and the Lehrjahre) and was placed by the poet as the first of his ballads in his collected Works in 1815, is reminiscent of these lines from ‘Summer’ in Thomson’s The Seasons:

  Bear me, Pomona! to thy citron groves;

  To where the lemon and the piercing lime,

  With the deep orange glowing through the green,

  Their lighter glories blend. Lay me reclined

  Beneath the spreading tamarind, that shakes,

  Fanned by the breeze, its fever-cooling fruit.

  THOMAS ARNE

  An Ode

  [Rule, Britannia!] (1740)1

  Before Alfred. A Masque begins, the authors print ‘The ARGUMENT’:

  After the Danes had made themselves masters in Chippenham, the strongest city in the Kingdom of Wessex; Alfred was at once abandoned by all his subjects. In this universal defection, that Monarch found himself obliged to retire into the little isle of Athelney in Somersetshire; a place then rough with woods and of difficult access. There, habited like a peasant, he lived unknown, for some time, in a shepherd’s cottage. He is supposed to be found in this retreat by the Earl of Devon; whose castle, upon the river Tau, was then besieged by the Danes.

  At the end of the Masque, the Hermit beseeches Alfred to ride forth:

  Britons, proceed, the subject Deep command,

  Awe with your navies every hostile land.

  In vain their threats, their armies all in vain;

  They rule the balanc’d world, who rule the main.

  I

  When Britain first, at heaven’s command,

  Arose from out the azure main;

  This was the charter of the land,

  And guardian Angels sung this strain:

  ‘Rule, Britannia, rule the waves;

  ‘Britons never will be slaves.’

  II

  The nations, not so blest as thee,

  Must, in their turns, to tyrants fall:

  While thou shalt flourish great and free,

  The dread and envy of them all.

  ‘Rule, &c.’

  III

  Still more majestic shalt thou rise,

  More dreadful, from each foreign stroke:

  As the loud blast that tears the skies,

  Serves but to root thy native oak.

  ‘Rule, &c.’

  IV

  Thee haughty tyrants ne’er shall tame:

  All their attempts to bend thee down,

  Will but arouse thy generous flame;

  But work their woe, and thy renown.

  ‘Rule, &c.’

  V

  To thee belongs the rural reign;

  Thy cities shall with commerce shine:

  And thine shall be the subject main,

  And every shore it circles thine.

  ‘Rule, &c.’

  VI

  The Muses, still with freedom found,

  Shall to thy happy coast repair:

  Blest Isle! with matchless beauty crown’d,

  And manly hearts to guard the fair.

  ‘Rule, &c.’

  JOSEPH HAYDN

  from The Seasons

  [lines 1–43 of ‘Spring’, adapted and translated into German by Baron Gottfried van Swieten] (1799–1801)

  Come, gentle Spring, ethereal mildness, come;

  And from the bosom of yon dropping cloud,

  While music wakes around, veiled in a shower

  Of shadowing roses, on our plains descend.

  O Hartford1, fitted or to shine in courts

  With unaffected grace, or walk the plain

  With innocence and meditation joined

  In soft assemblage, listen to my song,

  Which thy own season paints – when Nature all

  Is blooming and benevolent, like thee.

  And see where surly Winter passes off

  Far to the north, and calls his ruffian blasts:

  His blasts obey, and quit the howling2 hill,

  The shattered forest, and the ravaged vale;

  While softer gales succeed, at whose kind touch,

  Dissolving snows in livid torrents lost,

  The mountains lift their green heads to the sky.

  As yet the trembling year is unconfirmed,

  And Winter oft at eve resumes the breeze,

  Chills the pale morn, and bids his driving sleets

  Deform the day delightless; so that scarce

  The bittern knows his time with bill engulfed

  To shake the sounding marsh3; or from the shore

  The plovers when to scatter o’er the heath,

  And sing their wild notes to the listening waste.

  At last from Aries4 rolls the bounteous sun,

  And the bright Bull5 receives him. Then no more

  The expansive atmosphere is cramped with cold;

  But, full of life and vivifying soul,

  Lifts the light clouds sublime6, and spreads them thin,

  Fleecy, and white o’er all-surrounding heaven.

  Forth fly the tepid airs; and unconfined,

  Unbinding earth, the moving softness strays.

  Joyous the impatient husbandman perceives

  Relenting Nature, and his lusty steers

  Drives from their stalls to where the well-used plough

  Lies in the furrow loosened from the frost.

  There, unrefusing, to the harnessed yoke

  They lend their shoulder, and begin their toil,

  Cheered by the simple song and soaring lark.

  Meanwhile incumbent o’er the shining share

  The master leans, removes the obstructing clay,

  Winds the whole work, and sidelong lays the glebe.

  White through the neighbouring fields the sower stalks

  With measured step, and liberal throws the grain

  Into the faithful bosom of the ground:

  The harrow follows harsh, and shuts the scene.

  CHRISTOPHER SMART

  (1722–71)

  Smart, solely of such songmen [Milton and Keats], pierced the screen

  ’Twixt thing and word, lit language straight from soul, –

  Left no fine film-flake on the naked coal

  Live from the censer – shapely or uncouth,

  Fire-suffused through and through, one blaze of truth

  Undeadened by a lie, – (you have my mind) –

  For, think! this blaze outleapt with black behind

  And blank before, when Hayley and the rest …

  But let the dead successors worst and best

  Bury their dead: with life be my concern –

  Yours with the fire-flame: what I fain would learn

  Is just – (suppose me haply ignorant

  Down to the common knowledge, doctors vaunt)

  Just this – why only once the fire-flame was:

  No matter if the marvel came to pass

  The way folk judged – if power too long suppressed

  Broke loose and maddened, as the vulgar guessed,

  Or simply brain-disorder (doctors said),

  A turmoil of the particles disturbed

  Brain’s workaday performance in your head,

  Spurred spirit to wild action health had curbed:

  And so verse issued in a cataract

  Whence prose, before and after, unperturbed

  Was wont to wend its way. Concede the fact

  That here a poet was who always could –

  Never before did – never after would –

  Achieve the feat: how were such fact explained?

  ROBERT BROWNING: Parleyings with Certain People of Importance in Their Day (1887)

  The son of Peter Smart, a steward on the Vane family’s Kent estates, Christopher Smart became an outstanding scholar at Pembroke College, Cambridge, where he was elected to a Fellowship in 1745. While at university he wrote a great deal of humorous and
amatory verse, developed a taste for elegant clothes and drink, and was arrested for debt in 1747. He left Cambridge in 1749 and became a successful professional writer in London, viz. the subscription-list of celebrities who financed his first collection of verse, Poems on Several Occasions (1752): Thomas Arne, William Boyce, Roubilliac, Samuel Richardson, William Collins, Voltaire … Four times from 1750 to 1755 he won the Seatonian Prize of Cambridge University for his poems on the ‘Attributes of the Supreme Being’, but it was this increasing obsession with religion that began to undermine his health. His insanity took the form of religious mania, of following literally the Pauline injunction to ‘pray without ceasing’. As his friend Samuel Johnson put it: ‘Madness frequently discovers itself merely by unnecessary deviation from the usual modes of the world. My poor friend Smart shewed the disturbance of his mind, by falling upon his knees, and saying his prayers in the street, or in any other unusual place’ (James Boswell, The Life of Samuel Johnson). Smart was confined to St Luke’s Hospital and private asylums from 1756 to 1763, during which time he worked at several of his most important works: the Jubilate Agno, A Song to David (a verse translation of the Psalms, published in 1763, many of which were set to music by William Boyce) and the Hymns and Spiritual Songs for the Fasts and Festivals of the Church of England (1765). They were not well received and Smart spent the last eight years of his life pursued by debt collectors. Though he kept on publishing works, which included such delightful volumes for children as the Poetical Translation of the Fables of Phaedrus (1764), the Parables of Our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ (1768) and Hymns for the Amusement of Children (1770), he died within the Rules of the King’s Bench Prison.

  Despite the admiration of Robert Browning in Parleying with Certain People of Importance in Their Day (1887), it was not until the 1920s that interest in Smart’s work was rekindled and he was recognized as a poet of some genius. The manuscript of Jubilate Agno was rediscovered and published by W. F. Stead in 1939 as Rejoice in the Lamb: A Song from Bedlam, the first part of whose title was chosen by Benjamin Britten for his festival cantata. Smart’s remarkable work celebrates the beauty of God’s Creation in poetry that is based on the model of Hebrew antiphonal verse, consisting of parallel sets of verses, one beginning ‘Let …’, followed by a response beginning ‘For…’. Every creature in Smart’s poem worships God simply by being itself:

  For he is the servant of the Living God duly and daily serving him.

  For at the first glance of the glory of God in the East he worships in his way.

  A fragmentary manuscript of Jubilate Agno (only thirty-two folio pages survive) is housed at Harvard University. Smart wrote the poem at a snail’s pace during his confinement in the madhouse, sometimes three lines a day, sometimes one. It was probably begun between June 1758 and April 1759, and he worked on it until his release in January 1763. Britten uses a mere fifty-one verses of the original.

  BENJAMIN BRITTEN: Rejoice in the Lamb, Op. 30, Festival Cantata for chorus with treble, alto, tenor and bass solos with organ (1943/1943)

  Rejoice in God, O ye Tongues; give the glory to the Lord, and the Lamb.

  Nations, and languages, and every Creature, in which is the breath of Life.

  Let man and beast appear before him, and magnify his name together.

  Let Nimrod, the mighty hunter, bind a Leopard to the altar, and consecrate his spear to the Lord.

  Let Ishmael dedicate a Tyger, and give praise for the liberty in which the Lord has let him at large.

  Let Balaam appear with an Ass, and bless the Lord his people and his creatures for a reward eternal.

  Let Daniel come forth with a Lion, and praise God with all his might through faith in Christ Jesus.

  Let Ithamar minister with a Chamois, and bless the name of Him, that cloatheth the naked.

  Let Jakim with the Satyr bless God in the dance.

  Let David bless with the Bear – The beginning of victory to the Lord – to the Lord the perfection of excellence – Hallelujah from the heart of God, and from the hand of the artist inimitable, and from the echo of the heavenly harp in sweetness magnifical and mighty.

  For I will consider my Cat Jeoffry.

  For he is the servant of the Living God, duly and daily serving him.

  For at the first glance of the glory of God in the East he worships in his way.

  For this is done by wreathing his body seven times round with elegant quickness.

  For he knows that God is his Saviour.

  For God has blessed him in the variety of his movements.

  For there is nothing sweeter than his peace when at rest.

  For I am possessed of a cat, surpassing in beauty, from whom I take occasion to bless Almighty God.

  For the Mouse is a creature of great personal valour.

  For – this is a true case – Cat takes female mouse – male mouse will not depart, but stands threat’ning and daring.

  […] If you will let her go, I will engage you, as prodigious a creature as you are.

  For the Mouse is a creature of great personal valour.

  For the Mouse is of an hospitable disposition.

  For the flowers are great blessings.

  For the flowers have their angels even the words of God’s Creation.

  For the flower glorifies God and the root parries the adversary.

  For there is a language of flowers.

  For flowers are peculiarly the poetry of Christ.

  For I am under the same accusation with my Saviour –

  For they said, he is besides himself.

  For the officers of the peace are at variance with me, and the watchman smites me with his staff.

  For Silly fellow! Silly fellow! is against me and belongeth neither to me nor to my family.

  For I am in twelve HARDSHIPS, but he that was born of a virgin shall deliver me out of all.

  For H is a spirit and therefore he is God.

  For K is king and therefore he is God.

  For L is love and therefore he is God.

  For M is musick and therefore he is God.

  For the instruments are by their rhimes.

  For the Shawm rhimes are lawn fawn moon boon and the like.

  For the harp rhimes are sing ring string and the like.

  For the cymbal rhimes are bell well toll soul and the like.

  For the Bassoon rhimes are pass class and the like.

  For the dulcimer rhimes are grace place beat heat and the like.

  For the Clarinet rhimes are clean seen and the like.

  For the trumpet rhimes are sound bound soar more and the like.

  For the TRUMPET of God is a blessed intelligence and so are all the instruments in HEAVEN.

  For GOD the father Almighty plays upon the HARP of stupendous magnitude and melody.

  For at that time malignity ceases and the devils themselves are at peace.

  For this time is perceptible to man by a remarkable stillness and serenity of soul.

  Hallelujah from the heart of God, and from the hand of the artist inimitable, and from the echo of the heavenly harp in sweetness magnifical and mighty.

  JOHN NEWTON

  (1725–1807)

  To the Rev. Mr. Newton, on his return from Ramsgate

  (Written in October, 1780)

  That ocean you have late survey’d,

  Those rocks I too have seen,

  But I, afflicted and dismay’d,

  You, tranquil and serene.

  You from the flood-controlling steep

  Saw stretch’d before your view,

  With conscious joy, the threatening deep,

  No longer such to you.

  To me the waves, that ceaseless broke

  Upon the dangerous coast,

  Hoarsely and ominously spoke

  Of all my treasure lost.

  Your sea of troubles you have past,

  And found the peaceful shore;

  I, tempest-toss’d, and wreck’d at last,

  C
ome home to part no more.

  WILLIAM COWPER

  Sent to sea at the age of eleven (his father was a sailor), Newton spent a dissolute youth. Having deserted the navy, for which he was flogged, he was appointed captain of a ship that was engaged in the slave trade between Britain, West Africa and the West Indies. His conversion to Christianity was kindled on a voyage across the Atlantic. He was reading Thomas à Kempis’s The Imitation of Christ when a violent storm blew up. He spent the best part of a day either manning the pumps or alone at the ship’s wheel; as the ship was battered, he prayed aloud to God for protection and, when the storm abated, was ripe for conversion. He eventually abandoned the slave trade, associated himself with William Wilberforce’s campaign to abolish slavery, met John Wesley and spent nine years training for the Anglican ministry. His conversion is reflected in his ‘Amazing Grace’, which first appeared in Olney Hymns. In 1764 he became curate of Olney, where he worked with William Cowper, a fellow Evangelical. At the weekly prayer meetings (which became so popular that they had to be moved to a mansion near the church) Newton and Cowper took it in turns to produce a new hymn each week, which finally resulted in the publication of the Olney Hymns, 280 of which were by Newton. After sixteen years at Olney, he became rector of St Mary Woolnoth, where he worked until his death.

  JOSEPH HAYDN1

  This celebrated hymn, printed here as it appeared in the Olney Hymn Book (1779), draws heavily on the Bible. The first line is based on the third verse of Psalm 87; the seventh line on Isaiah xxvi. 1; and the ninth line echoes Psalm xlvi. 4.

  Zion, or the City of God