Sir or Madam,
Am one Eve Greensleeves8, in olden time
Kissed by men from many a clime,
Beneath sun, stars, in blaze, in breeze,
As now by glowworms and by bees,
All day cheerily,
All night eerily!
– I’m old Squire Audeley Grey9, who grew,
Sir or Madam,
Aweary of life, and in scorn withdrew;
Till anon I clambered up anew
As ivy-green, when my ache was stayed,
And in that attire I have longtime gayed
All day cheerily,
All night eerily!
– And so these maskers breathe to each
Sir or Madam
Who lingers there, and their lively speech
Affords an interpreter much to teach,
As their numerous accents seem to come
Thence hitheraround in a radiant hum,
All day cheerily,
All night eerily!
Exeunt omnes1
I
Everybody else, then, going,
And I still left where the fair was? …
Much have I seen of neighbour loungers
Making a lusty showing,
Each now past all knowing.
II
There is an air of blankness
In the street and the littered spaces;
Thoroughfare, steeple, bridge and highway
Wizen themselves to lankness;
Kennels2 dribble dankness.
III
Folk all fade. And whither,
As I wait alone where the fair was?
Into the clammy and numbing night-fog
Whence they entered hither.
Soon one more goes thither!
GERALD FINZI: A Young Man’s Exhortation, Op. 14 (1926–9/1933)
PART I: MANE FLOREAT, ET TRANSEAT
[‘IN THE MORNING IT FLOURISHES AND IS RENEWED’] [PSALM 90]
A young man’s exhortation
Call off your eyes from care
By some determined deftness; put forth joys
Dear as excess without the core that cloys,
And charm Life’s lourings fair.
Exalt and crown the hour
That girdles us, and fill it full with glee,
Blind glee, excelling aught could ever be
Were heedfulness in power.
Send up such touching strains
That limitless recruits from Fancy’s pack
Shall rush upon your tongue, and tender back
All that your soul contains.
For what do we know best?
That a fresh love-leaf crumpled soon will dry,
And that men moment after moment die,
Of all scope dispossest.
If I have seen one thing
It is the passing1 preciousness of dreams;
That aspects are within us; and who seems
Most kingly is the King.
Ditty
(E.L.G.)1
Beneath a knap2 where flown
Nestlings play,
Within walls of weathered stone,
Far away
From the files of formal houses,
By the bough the firstling browses,
Lives a Sweet: no merchants meet,
No man barters, no man sells
Where she dwells.
Upon that fabric fair
‘Here is she!’
Seems written everywhere
Unto me.
But to friends and nodding neighbours,
Fellow-wights in lot and labours,
Who descry the times as I,
No such lucid legend tells
Where she dwells.
Should I lapse to what I was
Ere we met;
(Such will not be, but because
Some forget
Let me feign it) – none would notice
That where she I know by rote is
Spread a strange and withering change,
Like a drying of the wells
Where she dwells.
To feel I might have kissed –
Loved as true –
Otherwhere, nor Mine have missed
My life through,
Had I never wandered near her,
Is a smart severe – severer
In the thought that she is nought,
Even as I, beyond the dells
Where she dwells.
And Devotion droops her glance
To recall
What bond-servants of Chance
We are all.
I but found her in that, going
On my errant path unknowing,
I did not out-skirt the spot
That no spot on earth excels,
– Where she dwells!
Budmouth dears1
(Hussar’s Song)
I
When we lay where Budmouth Beach is,
O, the girls were fresh as peaches,
With their tall and tossing figures and their eyes of blue and brown!
And our hearts would ache with longing
As we paced from our sing-songing,
With a smart Clink! Clink! up the Esplanade and down.
II
They distracted and delayed us
By the pleasant pranks they played us,
And what marvel, then, if troopers, even of regiments of renown,
On whom flashed those eyes divine, O,
Should forget the countersign, O,
As we tore Clink! Clink! back to camp above the town.
III
Do they miss us much, I wonder,
Now that war has swept us sunder,
And we roam from where the faces smile to where the faces frown?
And no more behold the features
Of the fair fantastic creatures,
And no more Clink! Clink! past the parlours of the town?
IV
Shall we once again there meet them?
Falter fond attempts to greet them?
Will the gay sling-jacket glow again beside the muslin gown? –
Will they archly quiz and con us
With a sideway glance upon us,
While our spurs Clink! Clink! up the Esplanade and down?
Her temple
See above, under Ireland.
The comet at Yell’ham1
I
It bends far over Yell’ham Plain,
And we, from Yell’ham Height2,
Stand and regard its fiery train,
So soon to swim from sight.
II
It will return long years hence, when
As now its strange swift shine
Will fall on Yell’ham; but not then
On that sweet form of thine3.
PART II: VESPERE DECIDAT, INDURET ET ARESCAT
[‘IN THE EVENING IT IS CUT DOWN, HARDENS AND WITHERS’] [PSALM 90]
Shortening days at the Homestead
[Shortening days]
The first fire since the summer is lit, and is smoking into the room:
The sun-rays thread it through, like woof-lines in a loom.
Sparrows spurt from the hedge, whom misgivings appal
That winter did not leave last year for ever, after all.
Like shock-headed urchins, spiny-haired,
Stand pollard willows, their twigs just bared.
Who is this coming with pondering pace,
Black and ruddy, with white embossed,
His eyes being black, and ruddy his face,
And the marge of his hair like morning frost?
It’s the cider-maker,
And apple tree shaker,
And behind him on wheels, in readiness,
His mill, and tubs, and vat, and press.
The sigh
Little head against my shoulder,
Shy at first, then somewhat bolder,
And up-eyed;
Till she, with a timi
d quaver,
Yielded to the kiss I gave her;
But, she sighed.
That there mingled with her feeling
Some sad thought she was concealing
It implied.
– Not that she had ceased to love me,
None on earth she set above me;
But she sighed.
She could not disguise a passion,
Dread, or doubt, in weakest fashion
If she tried:
Nothing seemed to hold us sundered,
Hearts were victors; so I wondered
Why she sighed.
Afterwards I knew her thoroughly,
And she loved me staunchly, truly,
Till she died;
But she never made confession
Why, at that first sweet concession,
She had sighed.
It was in our May, remember;
And though now I near November,
And abide
Till my appointed change, unfretting,
Sometimes I sit half-regretting
That she sighed.
Former beauties
These market-dames, mid-aged, with lips thin-drawn,
And tissues sere,
Are they the ones we loved in years agone,
And courted here?
Are these the muslined pink young things to whom
We vowed and swore
In nooks on summer Sundays by the Froom1,
Or Budmouth shore?
Do they remember those gay tunes we trod
Clasped on the green;
Aye; trod till moonlight set on the beaten sod
A satin sheen?
They must forget, forget! They cannot know
What once they were,
Or memory would transfigure them, and show
Them always fair.
Transformations
Portion of this yew
Is a man my grandsire knew,
Bosomed here at its foot:
This branch may be his wife,
A ruddy human life
Now turned to a green shoot.
These grasses must be made
Of her who often prayed,
Last century, for repose;
And the fair girl long ago
Whom I often tried to know
May be entering this rose.1
So, they are not underground,
But as nerves and veins abound
In the growths of upper air,
And they feel the sun and rain,
And the energy again
That made them what they were!
Regret not me
[The dance continued]1
Regret not me;
Beneath the sunny tree
I lie uncaring, slumbering peacefully.
Swift as the light
I flew my faery flight;
Ecstatically I moved, and feared no night.
I did not know
That heydays fade and go,
But deemed that what was would be always so.
I skipped at morn
Between the yellowing corn,
Thinking it good and glorious to be born.
I ran at eves
Among the piled-up sheaves,
Dreaming, ‘I grieve not, therefore nothing grieves.’
Now soon will come
The apple, pear, and plum,
And hinds2 will sing, and autumn insects hum.
Again you will fare
To cider-makings rare,
And junketings; but I shall not be there.
Yet gaily sing
Until the pewter ring
Those songs we sang when we went gipsying3.
And lightly dance
Some triple-timed romance
In coupled figures, and forget mischance;
And mourn not me
Beneath the yellowing tree;
For I shall mind not, slumbering peacefully.
GERALD FINZI: Earth and Air and Rain, Op. 15 (1936)
Summer schemes
See above, under Ireland.
When I set out for Lyonnesse1
When I set out for Lyonnesse,
A hundred miles away,
The rime was on the spray,
And starlight lit my lonesomeness
When I set out for Lyonnesse
A hundred miles away.
What would bechance at Lyonnesse
While I should sojourn there
No prophet durst declare,
Nor did the wisest wizard guess
What would bechance at Lyonnesse
While I should sojourn there.
When I came back from Lyonnesse
With magic in my eyes,
All marked with mute surmise
My radiance rare and fathomless,
When I came back from Lyonnesse
With magic in my eyes!
(Boughton, Duke, Gibbs, Hart)
Waiting both1
A star looks down at me,
And says: ‘Here I and you
Stand, each in our degree:
What do you mean to do, –
Mean to do?’
I say: ‘For all I know,
Wait, and let Time go by,
Till my change come.’ – ‘Just so,’
The star says: ‘So mean I: –
So mean I.’
The phantom horsewoman
[The phantom]
I
Queer are the ways of a man I know:1
He comes and stands
In a careworn craze2,
And looks at the sands
And the seaward haze
With moveless hands
And face and gaze,
Then turns to go …
And what does he see when he gazes so?
II
They say he sees as an instant thing
More clear than to-day,
A sweet soft scene
That once was in play
By that briny green;
Yes, notes alway
Warm, real, and keen,
What his back years bring –
A phantom of his own figuring.
III
Of this vision of his they might say more:
Not only there
Does he see this sight,
But everywhere
In his brain – day, night,
As if on the air
It were drawn rose-bright3 –
Yea, far from that shore
Does he carry this vision of heretofore:
IV
A ghost-girl-rider. And though, toil-tried,
He withers daily,
Time touches her not,
But she still rides gaily
In his rapt thought
On that shagged and shaly
Atlantic spot,
And as when first eyed
Draws rein and sings to the swing of the tide.
After reading Psalms XXXIX, XL, etc.
[So I have fared]
Simple was I and was young;
Kept no gallant tryst, I;
Even from good words held my tongue,
Quoniam Tu fecisti!1
Through my youth I stirred me not,
High adventure missed I,
Left the shining shrines unsought;
Yet – me deduxisti!2
At my start by Helicon3
Love-lore little wist I,
Worldly less; but footed on;
Why? Me suscepisti!4
When I failed at fervid rhymes,
‘Shall,’ I said, ‘persist I?’
‘Dies’ (I would add at times)
‘Meos posuisti!5’
So I have fared through many suns;
Sadly little grist I
Bring my mill, or any one’s,
Domine, Tu scisti!6
And at dead of night I call:
‘Though to prophets list I,
Which hath understood at all?
Yea: Quem elegisti?7’
The sergeant’s song
[Rollicum-rorum]1
When Lawyers strive to heal a breach,
And Parsons practise what they preach;
Then Boney2 he’ll come pouncing down,
And march his men on London town!
Rollicum-rorum, tol-lol-lorum,
Rollicum-rorum, tol-lol-lay!
When Justices hold equal scales,
And Rogues are only found in jails;
Then Boney he’ll come pouncing down,
And march his men on London town!
Rollicum-rorum, tol-lol-lorum,
Rollicum-rorum, tol-lol-lay!
When Rich Men find their wealth a curse,
And fill therewith the Poor Man’s purse;
Then Boney he’ll come pouncing down,
And march his men on London town!
Rollicum-rorum, tol-lol-lorum,
Rollicum-rorum, tol-lol-lay!
When Husbands with their Wives agree,
And Maids won’t wed from modesty;
Then Boney he’ll come pouncing down,
And march his men on London town!
Rollicum-rorum, tol-lol-lorum,
Rollicum-rorum, tol-lol-lay!
(Boughton, Holst)
To Lizbie Browne1
I
Dear Lizbie Browne,
Where are you now?
In sun, in rain? –
Or is your brow
Past joy, past pain,
Dear Lizbie Browne?
The Penguin Book of English Song Page 47