II
Sweet Lizbie Browne,
How you could smile,
How you could sing! –
How archly wile
In glance-giving,
Sweet Lizbie Browne!
III
And, Lizbie Browne,
Who else had hair
Bay-red as yours,
Or flesh so fair
Bred out of doors,
Sweet Lizbie Browne?
IV
When, Lizbie Browne,
You had just begun
To be endeared
By stealth to one,
You disappeared
My Lizbie Browne!
V
Ay, Lizbie Browne,
So swift your life,
And mine so slow,
You were a wife
Ere I could show
Love, Lizbie Browne.
VI
Still, Lizbie Browne,
You won, they said,
The best of men
When you were wed …
Where went you then,
O Lizbie Browne?
VII
Dear Lizbie Browne,
I should have thought,
‘Girls ripen fast’,
And coaxed and caught
You ere you passed,
Dear Lizbie Browne!
VIII
But, Lizbie Browne,
I let you slip;
Shaped not a sign;
Touched never your lip
With lip of mine,
Lost Lizbie Browne!
IX
So, Lizbie Browne,
When on a day
Men speak of me
As not, you’ll say,
‘And who was he?’ –
Yes, Lizbie Browne!
The clock of the years
‘A spirit passed before my face; the hair of my flesh stood up.’1
And the Spirit said,
‘I can make the clock of the years go backward,
But am loth to stop it where you will.’
And I cried, ‘Agreed
To that. Proceed:
It’s better than dead!’
He answered, ‘Peace’;
And called her up – as last before me;
Then younger, younger she freshed, to the year
I first had known
Her woman-grown,
And I cried, ‘Cease! –
‘Thus far is good –
It is enough – let her stay thus always!’
But alas for me – He shook his head:
No stop was there;
And she waned child-fair,
And to babyhood.
Still less in mien
To my great sorrow became she slowly,
And smalled till she was nought at all
In his checkless griff2;
And it was as if
She had never been.
‘Better,’ I plained,
‘She were dead as before! The memory of her
Had lived in me; but it cannot now!’
And coldly his voice:
‘It was your choice
To mar the ordained.’
While drawing in a churchyard
[In a churchyard (Song of the yew tree)]1
‘It is sad that so many of worth,
Still in the flesh,’ soughed the yew,
‘Misjudge their lot whom kindly earth
Secludes from view.
‘They ride their diurnal round2
Each day-span’s sum of hours
In peerless ease, without jolt or bound
Or ache like ours.
‘If the living could but hear
What is heard by my roots as they creep
Round the restful flock, and the things said there,
No one would weep.’
‘ “Now set among the wise,”
They say: “Enlarged in scope,
That no God trumpet us to rise
We truly hope.” ’
I listened to his strange tale
In the mood that stillness brings,
And I grew to accept as the day wore pale
That show of things.
Proud songsters1
The thrushes sing as the sun is going,
And the finches whistle in ones and pairs,
And as it gets dark loud nightingales
In bushes
Pipe, as they can when April wears,
As if all Time were theirs.
These are brand-new birds of twelve-months’ growing,
Which a year ago, or less than twain,
No finches were, nor nightingales,
Nor thrushes,
But only particles of grain,
And earth, and air, and rain.
(Britten)
GERALD FINZI: Before and after Summer, Op. 16 (1949)
Childhood among the ferns1
I sat one sprinkling day upon the lea,
Where tall-stemmed ferns spread out luxuriantly,
And nothing but those tall ferns sheltered me.
The rain gained strength, and damped each lopping frond,
Ran down their stalks beside me and beyond,
And shaped slow-creeping rivulets as I conned2,
With pride, my spray-roofed house. And though anon
Some drops pierced its green rafters, I sat on,
Making pretence I was not rained upon.
The sun then burst, and brought forth a sweet breath
From the limp ferns as they dried underneath:
I said: ‘I could live on here thus till death’;
And queried in the green rays as I sate:
‘Why should I have to grow to man’s estate,3
And this afar-noised World perambulate?’
Before and after summer
I
Looking forward to the spring
One puts up with anything.
On this February day
Though the winds leap down the street
Wintry scourgings seem but play,
And these later shafts of sleet
– Sharper pointed than the first –
And these later snows – the worst –
Are as a half-transparent blind
Riddled by rays from sun behind.
II
Shadows of the October pine
Reach into this room of mine:
On the pine there swings a bird;
He is shadowed with the tree.
Mutely perched he bills no word;
Blank as I am even is he.
For those happy suns are past,
Fore-discerned in winter last.
When went by their pleasure, then?
I, alas, perceived not when.
The self-unseeing1
Here is the ancient floor,
Footworn and hollowed and thin,
Here was the former door
Where the dead feet walked in.2
She sat here in her chair,
Smiling into the fire;
He who played stood there,
Bowing it higher and higher.3
Childlike, I danced in a dream;
Blessings emblazoned that day;
Everything glowed with a gleam;
Yet we were looking away!
Overlooking the River Stour [Overlooking the river]1
The swallows flew in the curves of an eight
Above the river-gleam
In the wet June’s last beam:
Like little crossbows animate
The swallows flew in the curves of an eight
Above the river-gleam.
Planing up shavings of crystal spray
A moor-hen darted out
From the bank thereabout,
And through the stream-shine ripped his way;
Planing up shavings of crystal spray
A moor-hen darted out.
Closed were the kingcups; and the mead
Dripped in monotonous green,
Though the day’s golden sheen
Had shown it golden and honeybee’d;
Closed were the kingcups; and the mead
Dripped in monotonous green.
And never I turned my head, alack,
While these things met my gaze
Through the pane’s drop-drenched glaze,
To see the more behind my back …
O never I turned, but let, alack,
These less things hold my gaze.
Channel firing (1940)1
That night your great guns, unawares,
Shook all our coffins as we lay,
And broke the chancel window-squares,
We thought it was the Judgment-day2
And sat upright. While drearisome
Arose the howl of wakened hounds:
The mouse let fall the altar-crumb,
The worms drew back into the mounds,
The glebe cow3 drooled. Till God called, ‘No;
It’s gunnery practice out at sea
Just as before you went below;
The world is as it used to be:
‘All nations striving strong to make
Red war yet redder. Mad as hatters
They do no more for Christés sake4
Than you who are helpless in such matters.
‘That this is not the judgment-hour
For some of them’s a blessed thing,
For if it were they’d have to scour
Hell’s floor for so much threatening …
‘Ha, ha. It will be warmer when
I blow the trumpet (if indeed
I ever do; for you are men,
And rest eternal sorely need).’
So down we lay again. ‘I wonder,
Will the world ever saner be,’
Said one, ‘than when He sent us under
In our indifferent century!’
And many a skeleton shook his head.
‘Instead of preaching forty year,’
My neighbour Parson Thirdly5 said,
‘I wish I had stuck to pipes and beer.’
Again the guns disturbed the hour,
Roaring their readiness to avenge,
As far inland as Stourton Tower6,
And Camelot7, and starlit Stonehenge.
In the mind’s eye
That was once her casement
And the taper nigh,
Shining from within there,
Beckoned, ‘Here am I!’
Now, as then, I see her
Moving at the pane;
Ah; ’tis but her phantom
Borne within my brain! –
Foremost in my vision
Everywhere goes she;
Change dissolves the landscapes,
She abides with me.
Shape so sweet and shy, Dear,
Who can say thee nay?
Never once do I, Dear,
Wish thy ghost away.
(Gurney)
The best she could
[The too short time]
Nine leaves a minute
Swim down shakily;
Each one fain would spin it
Straight to earth; but, see,
How the sharp airs win it
Slantwise away! – Hear it say,
‘Now we have finished our summer show
Of what we knew the way to do:
Alas, not much! But, as things go,
As fair as any. And night-time calls,
And the curtain falls!’
Sunlight goes on shining
As if no frost were here,
Blackbirds seem designing
Where to build next year;
Yet is warmth declining:
And still the day seems to say,
‘Saw you how Dame Summer drest?
Of all God taught her she bethought her!
Alas, not much! And yet the best
She could, within the too short time
Granted her prime.’
Epeisodia1
I
Past the hills that peep
Where the leaze2 is smiling,
On and on beguiling
Crisply-cropping sheep;
Under boughs of brushwood
Linking tree and tree
In a shade of lushwood,
There caressed we!
II
Hemmed by city walls
That outshut the sunlight,
In a foggy dun light,
Where the footstep falls
With a pit-pat wearisome
In its cadency
On the flagstones drearisome,
There pressed3 we!
III
Where in the wild-winged crowds
Blown birds show their whiteness
Up against the lightness
Of the clammy clouds;
By the random river
Pushing to the sea,
Under bents4 that quiver
There shall rest we.
Amabel1
I marked her ruined hues,
Her custom-straitened views,
And asked, ‘Can there indwell
My Amabel?’
I looked upon her gown,
Once rose, now earthen brown;
The change was like the knell
Of Amabel.
Her step’s mechanic ways
Had lost the life of May’s;
Her laugh, once sweet in swell,
Spoilt Amabel.
I mused: ‘Who sings the strain
I sang ere warmth did wane?
Who thinks its numbers spell
His Amabel?’ –
Knowing that, though Love cease,
Love’s race shows no decrease;
All find in dorp2 or dell
An Amabel.
– I felt that I could creep
To some housetop, and weep
That Time the tyrant fell
Ruled Amabel!
I said (the while I sighed
That love like ours had died),
‘Fond things I’ll no more tell
To Amabel,
‘But leave her to her fate,
And fling across the gate,
“Till the Last Trump, farewell,
O Amabel.” ’
He abjures love
At last I put off love,
For twice ten years
The daysman1 of my thought,
And hope, and doing;
Being ashamed thereof,
And faint of fears
And desolations, wrought
In his pursuing,
Since first in youthtime those
Disquietings
That heart-enslavement brings
To hale and hoary,
Became my housefellows.
And, fool and blind,
I turned from kith and kind
To give him glory.
I was as children be
Who have no care;
I did not shrink or sigh,
I did not sicken;
But lo, Love beckoned me,
And I was bare,
And poor, and starved, and dry,
And fever-stricken.
Too many times ablaze
With fatuous fires,
Enkindled by his wiles
To new embraces,
Did I, by wilful ways
And baseless ires,
Return the anxious smiles
Of friendly faces.
No more will now rate I
The common rare,
The midnight drizzle dew,
The gray hour golden,
The wind a yearning cry,
The faulty fair,
Things dreamt, of comelier hue –
Than things beholden! …
– I speak as one who plumbs
Life’s dim profound,
One who at length can sound
Clear views and certain.
But – after love wh
at comes?
A scene that lours,
A few sad vacant hours,
And then, the Curtain.
GERALD FINZI: Till Earth Outwears, Op. 19a (1958)
Let me enjoy
(MINOR KEY)
[Let me enjoy the earth]
I
Let me enjoy the earth no less
Because the all-enacting Might1
That fashioned forth its loveliness
Had other aims than my delight.
II
About my path there flits a Fair2,
Who throws me not a word or sign;
I’ll charm me with her ignoring air,
And laud the lips not meant for mine.
III
From manuscripts of moving song
Inspired by scenes and dream unknown
I’ll pour out raptures that belong
To others, as they were my own.
IV
And some day hence, toward Paradise
And all its blest – if such should be –
I will lift glad, afar-off eyes,
Though it contain no place for me.
A spot
[In years defaced]
In years defaced and lost,
Two sat here, transport-tossed,
Lit by a living love
The wilted world knew nothing of:
Scared momently
By gaingivings1,
Then hoping things
That could not be …
Of love and us no trace
Abides upon the place;
The sun and shadow wheel,
Season and season sereward2 steal;
The Penguin Book of English Song Page 48