The Penguin Book of English Song

by Richard Stokes

  And my soul only sees thy soul its own?

  O love, my love! if I no more should see

  Thyself, nor on the earth the shadow of thee,

  Nor image of thine eyes in any spring, –

  How then should sound upon Life’s darkening slope

  The ground-whirl of the perished leaves of Hope,

  The wind of Death’s imperishable wing?

  Silent noon

  Your hands lie open in the long fresh grass, –

  The finger-points look through like rosy blooms:

  Your eyes smile peace. The pasture gleams and glooms

  ’Neath billowing skies that scatter and amass.

  All round our nest, far as the eye can pass,

  Are golden kingcup-fields with silver edge

  Where the cow-parsley skirts the hawthorn-hedge.

  ’Tis visible silence, still as the hour-glass.

  Deep in the sun-searched growths the dragon-fly

  Hangs like a blue thread loosened from the sky: –

  So this wing’d hour is dropt to us from above.

  Oh! clasp we to our hearts, for deathless dower,

  This close-companioned inarticulate hour

  When twofold silence was the song of love.

  (Farrar, Orr)

  Passion and worship

  [Love’s minstrels]

  One flame-winged brought a white-winged harp-player

  Even where my lady and I lay all alone;

  Saying: ‘Behold, this minstrel is unknown;

  Bid him depart, for I am minstrel here:

  Only my strains are to Love’s dear ones dear.’

  Then said I: ‘Through thine hautboy’s rapturous tone

  Unto my lady still this harp makes moan,

  And still she deems the cadence deep and clear.’

  Then said my lady: ‘Thou art Passion of Love,

  And this Love’s Worship: both he plights to me.

  Thy mastering music walks the sunlit sea:

  But where wan water trembles in the grove

  And the wan moon is all the light thereof,

  This harp still makes my name its voluntary.’

  Heart’s haven

  Sometimes she is a child within mine arms,

  Cowering beneath dark wings that love must chase,

  With still tears showering and averted face,

  Inexplicably filled with faint alarms:

  And oft from mine own spirit’s hurtling harms

  I crave the refuge of her deep embrace, –

  Against all ills the fortified strong place

  And sweet reserve of sovereign counter-charms.

  And Love, our light at night and shade at noon,

  Lulls us to rest with songs, and turns away

  All shafts of shelterless tumultuous day.

  Like the moon’s growth, his face gleams through his tune;

  And as soft waters warble to the moon,

  Our answering spirits chime one roundelay.

  Death-in-love

  There came an image in Life’s retinue

  That had Love’s wings and bore his gonfalon1:

  Fair was the web, and nobly wrought thereon,

  O soul-sequestered face, thy form and hue!

  Bewildering sounds, such as Spring wakens to,

  Shook in its folds; and through my heart its power

  Sped trackless as the immemorable hour

  When birth’s dark portal groaned and all was new.

  But a veiled woman followed, and she caught

  The banner round its staff, to furl and cling,

  Then plucked a feather from the bearer’s wing,

  And held it to his lips that stirred it not,

  And said to me, ‘Behold, there is no breath:

  I and this Love are one, and I am Death.’

  Love’s last gift

  Love to his singer held a glistening leaf,

  And said: ‘The rose-tree and the apple-tree

  Have fruits to vaunt or flowers to lure the bee,

  And golden shafts are in the feathered sheaf

  Of the great harvest-marshal, the year’s chief,

  Victorious Summer; aye, and ’neath warm sea

  Strange secret grasses lurk inviolably

  Between the filtering channels of sunk reef.

  All are my blooms; and all sweet blooms of love

  To thee I gave while Spring and Summer sang;

  But Autumn stops to listen, with some pang

  From those worse things the wind is moaning of.

  Only this laurel dreads no winter days:

  Take my last gift; thy heart hath sung my praise.’

  JOHN IRELAND: from Three Songs (1926/1928)

  The one hope1

  When vain desire at last and vain regret

  Go hand in hand to death, and all is vain,

  What shall assuage the unforgotten pain

  And teach the unforgetful to forget?

  Shall Peace be still a sunk stream long unmet, –

  Or may the soul at once in a green plain

  Stoop through the spray of some sweet life-fountain

  And cull the dew-drenched flowering amulet?

  Ah! when the wan soul in that golden air

  Between the scriptured petals softly blown

  Peers breathless for the gift of grace unknown, –

  Ah! let none other alien spell soe’er

  But only the one Hope’s one name be there, –

  Not less nor more, but even that word alone.

  CHRISTINA ROSSETTI

  (1830–94)

  Christina Rossetti was of an ordinary female middle height – slim in youth, but, in middle and advanced age, often rather over-plump; this had been the tendency of both her parents […] My sister’s complexion was dark and uniform […] and after early youth her cheeks were colourless. Her hair was a dark brown, with a good deal of gloss; not remarkably plenteous in youth, and only a little altered by age – to the last it was essentially brown, not grey […] Her eyes were originally a blueish-grey (portraits show this); but in adult years they might rather be called a greyish hazel, or a richly hazelled grey, and towards the close they may have told out to most persons as being a warm brown, of dark tint. They were always of full size; and, after the attack of exophthalmic bronchocele which began in 1871, they were over-prominent – even somewhat distressingly so at times, but by no means always. The forehead was ample, the lips not noticeably full, with a firm and also a sensitive expression, the chin rather prolonged and pointed in girlhood, but this was little or not at all observable later on; the facial contour shapely. Her nose was not far from being straight, but taking a slight outward curve towards the tip. Her hands were delicate; and her figure might be called good, without being remarkably fine. She had a good speaking and reading voice – singing she never attempted, apart from the ordinary congregational singing in church.

  WILLIAM MICHAEL ROSSETTI: Some Reminiscences (1906)

  A photograph (albumen print) of the Rossetti family, taken by Lewis Carroll on 7 October 1863, can be seen in the National Portrait Gallery, showing Dante Gabriel, Christina, Frances Lavinia and William Michael, the author of Some Reminiscences. Christina was associated with the Pre-Raphaelites, through her engagement to the painter James Collinson, before he left her to rejoin the Roman Catholic Church, and her friendship with the landscape painter John Brett, who wooed her unsuccessfully, as we read in Christina’s poem ‘No, thank you, John’. Despite such associations, Christina Rossetti managed to avoid the over-rich and cloying style that blighted much of their writing. Her own poems, with their short lines and irregular rhythms, have proved much more popular with composers than those of her brother Dante Gabriel. They were set by a variety of composers, including Coleridge-Taylor, Elgar, Finzi, Head, Ireland, Parry, Quilter, Somervell, Vaughan Williams and Wood. Themes of childhood, religion (she was a devout High Anglican), love (often unrequited) and fantasy prevail, and the mood is o
ften melancholy and resigned. Apart from the painful and disfiguring exophthalmic bronchocele (Graves’ disease) mentioned above by William Michael Rossetti, Christina also suffered from acute anxiety, although a friend once described her sickness as ‘religious mania bordering on insanity’; and Virginia Woolf said that Christina ‘positively liked being ill […] it reminded her of her narrow bed, and of the chance of hell fire, and the probability of eternal torment’ (letter to Violet Dickinson, 13? December 1906).

  She led a quiet life, during which she scarcely ever left London. She formed a touching friendship with Swinburne, who dedicated A Century of Roundels to her, and she read his Atalanta in Calydon (1865) with enjoyment but pasted paper slips over offending passages, such as lines dealing with ‘the supreme evil, God’. She was highly sensitive about her private life, and wrote to her publisher: ‘I must beg that you will not fix upon any [poems] which the most imaginative person could construe into love personals … you will feel how more than ever intolerable it would now be to have my verses regarded as outpourings of a wounded spirit.’ Her grandfather published her first poems in a little pamphlet when she was only sixteen. At the age of twenty she contributed poems, under the pseudonym of Ellen Alleyn, to The Germ, a periodical started by the Brotherhood in 1850. Her first significant publication, Goblin Market and Other Poems, illustrated by Dante Gabriel, appeared in 1862. The poems of Sing-Song: A Nursery Rhyme Book (1872) were addressed to the baby son of Arthur Cayley, a Cambridge mathematician, and Christina drew some pen-and-ink sketches on her manuscript copy. Her Poetical Works were edited by W. M. Rossetti and published in 1904. The difference in character between Christina and her brother is beautifully captured by Max Beerbohm in Rossetti and His Circle, where the narrative to a hilarious cartoon runs: ‘Rossetti, having just had a fresh consignment of “stunning” fabrics from that new shop in Regent Street, tries hard to prevail on his younger sister to accept at any rate one of these and have a dress made of it from designs to be furnished by himself.’ The caption beneath the cartoon reads:

  D.G.R. ‘What is the use, Christina, of having a heart like a singing bird and a water-shoot [see ‘My heart is like a singing bird’] and all the rest of it, if you insist on getting yourself up like a pew-opener?’

  C.R. ‘Well, Gabriel, I don’t know – I’m sure you yourself always dress very quietly.’

  The austerity of her character is well captured by John Brett, whose unfinished portrait of Christina can be seen in the Barber Institute of Fine Arts in Birmingham.

  HUBERT PARRY: from English Lyrics X (1909/1918)

  A birthday

  [My heart is like a singing bird]

  My heart is like a singing bird

  Whose nest is in a watered shoot;

  My heart is like an apple tree

  Whose boughs are bent with thickest fruit;

  My heart is like a rainbow shell

  That paddles in a halcyon sea1;

  My heart is gladder than all these

  Because my love is come to me.

  Raise me a dais of silk and down;

  Hang it with vair2 and purple dyes;

  Carve it in doves and pomegranates,

  And peacocks with a hundred eyes;

  Work it in gold and silver grapes,

  In leaves and silver fleurs-de-lys;

  Because the birthday of my life

  Is come, my love is come to me.

  (Castelnuovo-Tedesco, Coleridge-Taylor, Cowen, Gibbs, Milhaud, F. G. Scott)

  HAROLD DARKE1

  A Christmas carol

  [In the bleak mid-winter] (1909)

  In the bleak mid-winter

  Frosty wind made moan,

  Earth stood hard as iron,

  Water like a stone;

  Snow had fallen, snow on snow,

  Snow on snow,

  In the bleak mid-winter

  Long ago.

  Our God, Heaven cannot hold Him

  Nor earth sustain;

  Heaven and earth shall flee away

  When He comes to reign:

  In the bleak mid-winter

  A stable-place sufficed

  The Lord God Almighty

  Jesus Christ.

  Enough for Him, whom cherubim

  Worship night and day,

  A breastful of milk

  And a mangerful of hay;

  Enough for Him whom angels

  Fall down before,

  The ox and ass and camel

  Which adore.

  Angels and archangels

  May have gathered there,

  Cherubim and seraphim

  Throng’d the air,

  But only His mother

  In her maiden bliss

  Worshipped the Beloved

  With a kiss.

  What can I give Him,

  Poor as I am?

  If I were a shepherd

  I would bring a lamb,

  If I were a wise man

  I would do my part, –

  Yet what I can I give Him,

  Give my heart.

  (Britten, Holst, Milford)

  JOHN IRELAND: Mother and Child: Nursery Rhymes (1918/1918)

  Newborn1

  Your brother has a falcon,

  Your brother has a flower;

  But what is left for mannikin,

  Born within an hour?

  I’ll nurse you on my knee, my knee,

  My own little son;

  I’ll rock you, rock you, in my arms,

  My least little one.

  The only child

  Crying, my little one, footsore and weary?

  Fall asleep, pretty one, warm on my shoulder:

  I must tramp on through the winter night dreary,

  While the snow falls on me colder and colder.

  You are my one, and I have not another;

  Sleep soft, my darling, my trouble and treasure;

  Sleep warm and soft in the arms of your mother,

  Dreaming of pretty things, dreaming of pleasure.

  Hope

  I dug and dug amongst the snow,

  And thought the flowers would never grow;

  I dug and dug amongst the sand,

  And still no green thing came to hand.

  Melt, O snow! the warm winds blow

  To thaw the flowers and melt the snow;

  But all the winds from every land

  Will rear no blossom from the sand.

  Skylark and nightingale

  When a mounting skylark sings

  In the sunlit summer morn,

  I know that heaven is up on high,

  And on earth are fields of corn.

  But when a nightingale sings

  In the moonlit summer even,

  I know not if earth is merely earth,

  Only that heaven is heaven.

  (Somervell)

  The blind boy1

  Blind from my birth,

  Where flowers are springing

  I sit on earth

  All dark.

  Hark! hark!

  A lark is singing,

  His notes are all for me,

  For me his mirth: –

  Till some day I shall see

  Beautiful flowers

  And birds in bowers

  Where all Joy Bells are ringing.

  Baby

  Love me,— I love you,

  Love me, my baby;

  Sing it high, sing it low,

  Sing it as may be.

  Mother’s arms under you,

  Her eyes above you;

  Sing it high, sing it low,

  Love me,— I love you.

  (Dunhill, Homer)

  Death-parting

  [Death parting]

  ‘Good-bye in fear, good-bye in sorrow,

  Goodbye, and all in vain,

  Never to meet again, my dear —’

  ‘Never to part again.’

  ‘Good-bye today, goodbye tomorrow,

  Good-bye till earth shall wane, />
  Never to meet again, my dear —’

  ‘Never to part again.’

  The garland

  Roses blushing red and white,

  For delight;

  Honeysuckle wreaths above,

  For love;

  Shining lilies tall and straight,

  For royal state;

  Dusky pansies, let them be

  For memory;

  With violets of fragrant breath,

  For death.

  GERALD FINZI: from Oh Fair to See, Op. 13b (1965)

  Oh fair to see (1929)

  Oh fair to see

  Bloom-laden cherry tree,

  Arrayed in sunny white,

  An April day’s delight;

  Oh fair to see!

  Oh fair to see

  Fruit-laden cherry tree,

  With balls of shining red

  Decking a leafy head;

  Oh fair to see!

  ROGER QUILTER

  Song

  [A song at parting] (1952)1

  When I am dead, my dearest,

  Sing no sad songs for me;

  Plant thou no roses at my head,

  Nor shady cypress tree:

  Be the green grass above me

  With showers and dewdrops wet;

  And if thou wilt, remember,

  And if thou wilt, forget.

  I shall not see the shadows,

  I shall not feel the rain;

  I shall not hear the nightingale

  Sing on, as if in pain.

  And dreaming through the twilight

  That doth not rise nor set,

  Haply I may remember,

  And haply may forget.

  (Castelnuovo-Tedesco, Coleridge-Taylor, Hageman, Ireland, Korngold, Lehmann, Somervell, Vaughan Williams, Williamson)