I
Thou still unravished bride of quietness,
Thou foster-child of silence and slow time,
Sylvan historian, who canst thus express
A flowery tale more sweetly than our rhyme!
What leaf-fringed legend haunts about thy shape
Of deities or mortals, or of both,
In Tempe or the dales of Arcady?2
What men or gods are these? What maidens loth?
What mad pursuit? What struggle to escape?
What pipes and timbrels? What wild ecstasy?
II
Heard melodies are sweet, but those unheard
Are sweeter; therefore, ye soft pipes, play on;
Not to the sensual ear, but, more endeared,
Pipe to the spirit ditties of no tone:
Fair youth beneath the trees, thou canst not leave
Thy song, nor ever can those trees be bare;
Bold lover, never, never canst thou kiss,
Though winning near the goal – yet do not grieve:
She cannot fade, though thou hast not thy bliss,
For ever wilt thou love, and she be fair!
III
Ah, happy, happy boughs, that cannot shed
Your leaves, nor ever bid the spring adieu;
And, happy melodist, unwearièd,
For ever piping songs for ever new!
More happy love, more happy, happy love!
For ever warm and still to be enjoyed,
For ever panting, and for ever young –
All breathing human passion far above,
That leaves a heart high-sorrowful and cloyed,
A burning forehead, and a parching tongue.
IV
Who are these coming to the sacrifice?
To what green altar, O mysterious priest,
Lead’st thou that heifer lowing at the skies,
And all her silken flanks with garlands dressed?
What little town by river or sea shore,
Or mountain-built with peaceful citadel,
Is emptied of this folk, this pious morn?
And, little town, thy streets for evermore
Will silent be; and not a soul to tell
Why thou art desolate, can e’er return.
V
O Attic shape! Fair attitude! with brede3
Of marble men and maidens overwrought,
With forest branches and the trodden weed –
Thou, silent form, dost tease us out of thought
As doth eternity. Cold pastoral!
When old age shall this generation waste,
Thou shalt remain, in midst of other woe
Than ours, a friend to man, to whom thou say’st,
‘Beauty is truth, truth beauty’ – that is all
Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know.
BENJAMIN BRITTEN: from Serenade, Op. 31, for tenor, horn and strings (1943/1944)
To Sleep
[Sonnet to Sleep]
O soft embalmer of the still midnight,
Shutting with careful fingers and benign
Our gloom-pleas’d eyes, embower’d from the light,
Enshaded in forgetfulness divine:
O soothest Sleep! If so it please thee, close
In midst of this thine hymn my willing eyes,
Or wait the ‘Amen’ ere thy poppy throws
Around my bed its lulling charities.
Then save me or the passèd day will shine
Upon my pillow, breeding many woes:
Save me from curious conscience, that still hoards
Its strength for darkness, burrowing like the mole;
Turn the key deftly in the oilèd wards,
And seal the hushèd casket of my soul.
(Castelnuovo-Tedesco)
BENJAMIN BRITTEN: from Nocturne, Op. 60, for tenor, seven obbligato instruments and string orchestra (1958/1959)
Sleep and poetry1
What is more gentle than a wind in summer?
What is more soothing than the pretty hummer
That stays one moment in an open flower,
And buzzes cheerily from bower to bower?
What is more tranquil than a musk-rose blowing
In a green island, far from all men’s knowing?
More healthful than the leafiness of dales?
More secret than a nest of nightingales?
More serene than Cordelia’s countenance?
More full of visions than a high romance?
What, but thee, Sleep? Soft closer of our eyes!
Low murmurer of tender lullabies!
Light hoverer around our happy pillows!
Wreather of poppy buds, and weeping willows!
Silent entangler of a beauty’s tresses!
Most happy listener! when the morning blesses
Thee for enlivening all the cheerful eyes
That glance so brightly at the new sun-rise.
[…]
JUDITH WEIR: from The Voice of Desire (2003)
I had a dove, and the sweet dove died
[Sweet little red feet]1
I had a dove and the sweet dove died,
And I have thought it died of grieving;
O what could it grieve for? Its feet were tied
With a silken thread of my own hand’s weaving:
Sweet little red feet! why would you die?
Why would you leave me, sweet bird, why?
You liv’d alone in the forest tree,
Why, pretty thing! could you not live with me?
I kiss’d you oft and gave you white pease;
Why not live sweetly as in the green trees?
(Castelnuovo-Tedesco, Head)
WILLIAM BARNES
(1801–86)
Mr. Barnes is not only one of the few living poets of England, but […] in one respect, he stands out, in a remarkable way, from other living English poets […]. Seldom before has the precept ‘look in thy heart and write’ been followed with such integrity and simplicity; and seldom before have rural nature and humanity in its simpler aspects been expressed in verse with fidelity so charming. We breathe the morning air while we are reading.
COVENTRY PATMORE: from a review of Barnes’s second dialect collection in Macmillan’s Magazine (June 1862)
The son of a farming family, William Barnes began writing poetry at an early age and contributed poems to a Dorchester newspaper in his teens. In 1827 he married Julia Miles, who bore him six children and was at the centre of all his love poems before and after her death in 1852 at the age of forty-seven – after which he closed each day’s diary entry with the Italian form of her name: Giulia. The elegies in dialect and standard English that he wrote when she died evoke memories of her in much the same way – minus the guilt – that Hardy’s ‘Poems of 1912’ recall his relationship with Emma Gifford. He became a schoolmaster, founded several schools, and was ordained deacon by the Bishop of Salisbury at the age of forty-eight. When his school in Dorchester began to fail, he was given a Civil List pension of £70 a year; and in 1862 he was presented with the living of Winterborne Came, near Dorchester, where he preached up to his death. Greatly admired by Tennyson, Hopkins, Patmore and Hardy, Barnes is now chiefly remembered as the Dorset dialect poet. He mastered some sixty languages and campaigned to rid English of classical and foreign influences, preferring, for example, ‘fall-time’ to ‘autumn’, ‘sun-print’ to ‘photograph’, ‘pushwainling’ to ‘perambulator’ and ‘skysill’ to ‘horizon’. His collected dialect poems appeared in 1879 as Poems of Rural Life in the Dorset Dialect, and he also published poems in standard English. Despite the publication of his A Grammar and Glossary of the Dorset Dialect (1863), recent research suggests that Barnes, far from using a ‘real’ language in his dialect poems, was in fact creating a language that mixed dialect forms with his own inventions. He died on 7 October 1886 and the funeral, held four days later, inspired a tribute from Thomas Hardy in a poem, ‘The last signal’, that
used several of Barnes’s metrical techniques. He was also much admired by Tennyson, who wrote a letter of condolence to Barnes’s daughter after the poet’s death: ‘Your father seems to me one of the men most to be honoured and revered in our day.’
RALPH VAUGHAN WILLIAMS
Blackmwore maïdens
[Blackmwore by the Stour] (c.1901/1902)
The primrwose in the sheäde do blow,
The cowslip in the zun,
The thyme upon the down do grow,
The clote1 where streams do run;
An’ where do pretty maïdens grow
An’ blow, but where the tow’r
Do rise among the bricken tuns2,
In Blackmwore by the Stour.
If you could zee their comely gaït,
An’ pretty feäces’ smiles,
A-trippèn on so light o’ waïght3,
An’ steppèn off the stiles;
A-gwaïn to church, as bells do swing
An’ ring ’ithin the tow’r,
You’d own the pretty maïdens’ pleäce
Is Blackmwore by the Stour.
If you vrom Wimborne took your road,
To Stower or Paladore4,
An’ all the farmers’ housen show’d
Their daughters at the door;
You’d cry to bachelors at hwome –
‘Here, come: ’ithin an hour
You’ll vind ten maïdens to your mind,
In Blackmwore by the Stour.’
An’ if you look’d ’ithin their door,
To zee em in their pleäce,
A-doèn housework up avore
Their smilèn mother’s feäce;
You’d cry – ‘Why, if a man would wive
An’ thrive, ’ithout a dow’r,
Then let en look en out a wife
In Blackmwore by the Stour.’
As I upon my road did pass
A school-house back in Maÿ,
There out upon the beäten grass
Wer maïdens at their plaÿ;
An’ as the pretty souls did tweil5
An’ smile, I cried, ‘The flow’r
O’ beauty, then, is still in bud
In Blackmwore by the Stour.’
My orcha’d in Linden Lea
[Linden Lea] (c.1901/1902)1
Within the woodlands, flow’ry gladed,
By the oak trees’ mossy moot2,
The shining grass blades, timber-shaded,
Now do quiver underfoot;
And birds do whistle overhead,
And water’s bubbling in its bed;
And there, for me, the apple tree
Do lean down low in Linden Lea.
When leaves, that lately were a-springing,
Now do fade within the copse,
And painted birds do hush their singing,
Up upon the timber tops;
And brown-leaved fruit’s a-turning red,
In cloudless sunshine overhead,
With fruit for me, the apple tree
Do lean down low in Linden Lea.
Let other folk make money faster
In the air of dark-room’d towns;
I don’t dread a peevish master,
Though no man may heed my frowns.
I be free to go abroad,
Or take again my homeward road
To where, for me, the apple tree
Do lean down low in Linden Lea.
Barnes’s original text:
My orcha’d in Linden Lea
’Ithin the woodlands, flow’ry gleäded,
By the woak tree’s mossy moot,
The sheenèn grass-bleädes, timber-sheäded,
Now do quiver under voot;
An’ birds do whissle over head,
An’ water’s bubblèn in its bed,
An’ there vor me the apple tree
Do leän down low in Linden Lea.1
When leaves that leätely wer a-springèn
Now do feäde ’ithin the copse,
An’ païnted birds do hush their zingèn
Up upon the timber’s tops;
An’ brown-leav’d fruit’s a-turnèn red,
In cloudless zunsheen, over head,
Wi’ fruit vor me, the apple tree
Do leän down low in Linden Lea.
Let other vo’k meäke money vaster
In the aïr o’ dark-room’d towns,
I don’t dread a peevish meäster;
Though noo man do heed my frowns,
I be free to goo abrode,
Or teäke ageän my hwomeward road
To where, vor me, the apple tree
Do leän down low in Linden Lea.
CARDINAL NEWMAN
(1801–90)
Stuffing birds or playing stringed instruments is an elegant pastime, and a resource to the idle, but it is not education.
CARDINAL NEWMAN: The Idea of a University Defined and Illustrated (1873)
The eldest child of a London banker, John Henry Newman was elected a Fellow of Oriel College, Oxford, in 1822, and six years later, having taken Anglican orders, was appointed vicar of the Oxford University Church of St Mary, where he became celebrated as a preacher. In 1833, while travelling in the Mediterranean, he was felled by a fever that nearly killed him. ‘The pillar of the cloud’, which has inspired four popular hymns by Harris, Dykes, Purday and Sullivan, was written by Newman at sea, as he returned from Sicily and nearly died of typhoid fever. His ship was becalmed in the Straits of Bonifacio between Corsica and Sardinia, and it was while waiting in the stifling heat on deck for a breeze to spring up that he wrote the words (‘Lead, Kindly Light, amid the encircling gloom’) of what has become one of the most popular of all hymns. It was first published in the British Magazine in 1834. Newman became a key figure in the Tractarian Movement, which stressed the Catholic aspects of the Church of England’s inheritance. The Movement’s Tract 90, which sought to reconcile the Anglican Church’s 39 Articles with Catholic teaching, caused an uproar and was rejected by the Oxford Heads of Houses. In 1842 he retired to the parish of Littlemore (see Pärt), a small village close to Oxford, to reflect on the seeming impossibility of finding a middle way between the Catholic Church and Protestantism. Eventually, he resigned his living of St Mary in 1843, and his Oriel fellowship in 1845, and was received into the Catholic Church. In 1848 he founded the Birmingham Oratory, where he lived for the rest of his life. He also founded the Oratory School in 1859. He was elected a Fellow of Trinity College, Oxford, in 1877, and became a cardinal of the Catholic Church in 1879. Newman’s important publications include: Parochial and Plain Sermons (1837), An Essay on the Development of Christian Doctrine (1845), Apologia pro Vita Sua (1864), in which he defended his religious opinions against Charles Kingsley’s attack, and The Dream of Gerontius (1865). He also wrote two novels: Loss and Gain (1848) and Callista (1855).
JOHN BACCHUS DYKES1
The Pillar of the Cloud
[Lead, Kindly Light] (1867)2
Lead, Kindly Light, amid the encircling gloom,
Lead Thou me on!
The night is dark, and I am far from home –
Lead Thou me on!
Keep Thou my feet; I do not ask to see
The distant scene – one step enough for me.
I was not ever thus, nor pray’d that Thou
Shouldst lead me on.
I loved to choose and see my path, but now
Lead Thou me on!
I loved the garish day, and, spite of fears,
Pride ruled my will: remember not past years.
So long Thy power hath blest me, sure it still
Will lead me on,
O’er moor and fen, o’er crag and torrent, till
The night is gone;
And with the morn those angel faces smile
Which I have loved long since, and lost awhile.3
(Evans, Harris, Harwood, Lehmann, Purday, Sullivan, Tavener)
EDWARD ELGAR: from The Dream of Gerontius,
oratorio for mezzo, tenor, bass, chorus and orchestra (1899–1900)
The Dream of Gerontius has occasionally polarized critical opinion. Neville Cardus, writing in the Manchester Guardian (1939), said: ‘If a German or an Austrian, a Czech or a Bashibazouk, had composed Gerontius, the whole world would have by now admitted its qualities.’ Delius, on the other hand, said to Eric Fenby (Delius As I Knew Him, 1936): ‘Elgar […] might have been a great composer if he had thrown all that religious paraphernalia overboard. Gerontius is a nauseating work […].’ Pope Pius XII confided to Sir John Barbirolli (quoted in Kennedy, Barbirolli, Conductor Laureate, 1971): ‘My son, that is a sublime masterpiece.’ At the head of the score stand the initials AMDG (Ad maiorem Dei gloriam) – ‘To the greater glory of God’ – that had been so often used by Bach; and after the final bar Elgar wrote: ‘This is the best of me.’ The figure of Gerontius fascinated Elgar, who wrote that he was ‘a man like us […] a sinner, a repentant one of course, but still no end of a worldly man in his life, and now brought to book. Therefore I’ve not filled his part with church tunes and rubbish but a good, healthy, full blooded romantic, remembered worldliness, so to speak. It is, I imagine, much more difficult to tear oneself away from a well-to-do world than from a cloister.’
Gerontius
Jesu, Maria – I am near to death,
And Thou art calling me; I know it now.
Not by the token of this faltering breath,
This chill at heart, this dampness on my brow,–
(Jesu, have mercy! Mary, pray for me!)
’Tis this new feeling, never felt before,
(Be with me, Lord, in my extremity!)
That I am going, that I am no more.
’Tis this strange innermost abandonment,
(Lover of Souls! great God! I look to Thee,)
The Penguin Book of English Song Page 36