The Penguin Book of English Song
Page 54
There are currently over 160 song cycles based on A Shropshire Lad. Charles Wilfred Orr once said (see Stephen Cary’s ‘A. E. Housman and the Renaissance of English Song’) that ‘Housman wrote verse that was (a) beautiful, (b) scanned, (c) rhymed, and (d) made sense […] He is, I think, to English songwriters very much what Heine was to German and Verlaine to French composers.’ Lovers of Lieder will appreciate that Housman is also, to some degree, a late nineteenth-century incarnation of Wilhelm Müller. Housman’s hero, who shares some similarities with the protagonist of Müller’s Die Winterreise, questions religious faith and the value of human life in an age of war, acknowledges (as Hardy did) the crushing fatalism of existence and has a deep appreciation of the beauties of nature. As with Heine (excepting Die Nordsee), nature description in A Shropshire Lad almost always serves as a backdrop to the emotions of the poet or his protagonist. Like Heine, Housman was a master of the Stimmungsbrechung, the sting in the tail, the puncturing of mood, to which composers have not always attended; and, like Heine, Housman suffered from unrequited love.
Housman originally intended to call the volume The Poems of Terence Hearsay – a smokescreen which enabled him to explore his innermost feelings without embarrassment. Like Terence, the Greek dramatist, Housman was, in a sense, also an exile, living in London far away from the landscape he loved. It was A. W. Pollard who suggested that A Shropshire Lad was a better title, as he explains in Recollections: ‘A Shropshire Lad, under the name of Terence, was ready for publication […] my being entrusted with the manuscript led me to suggest that Terence was not an attractive title, and that in the phrase “A Shropshire Lad”, which he had used in the poem, he had much a better one. He agreed at once, and I think the change helped.’
The titles of the poems printed here were provided, almost without exception, by the composers. Only 16 of the 63 poems of A Shropshire Lad were given titles by Housman: ‘1887’, ‘Recruit’, ‘Reveille’, ‘March’, ‘To an athlete dying young’, ‘Bredon Hill’, ‘The Welsh marches’, ‘The Lent lily’, ‘The new mistress’, ‘The merry guide’, ‘The immortal part’, ‘The carpenter’s son’, ‘The true lover’, ‘The day of battle’, ‘The Isle of Portland’ and ‘Hughley Steeple’. A poem’s provenance is indicated below by ASL (A Shropshire Lad), LP (Last Poems), MP (More Poems) and AP (Additional Poems).
ARTHUR SOMERVELL: A Shropshire Lad (1904/1904)
Loveliest of trees (ASL 2)
Loveliest of trees, the cherry now1
Is hung with bloom along the bough,
And stands about the woodland ride
Wearing white for Eastertide.
Now, of my threescore years and ten,
Twenty will not come again,
And take from seventy springs a score,
It only leaves me fifty more.
And since to look at things in bloom
Fifty springs are little room,
About the woodlands I will go
To see the cherry hung with snow.
(Butterworth, Duke, Gurney, Herbert, Moeran, Orr, Peel)
When I was one-and-twenty (ASL 13)
When I was one-and-twenty
I heard a wise man say,
‘Give crowns and pounds and guineas
But not your heart away;
Give pearls away and rubies
But keep your fancy free.’
But I was one-and-twenty,
No use to talk to me.
When I was one-and-twenty
I heard him say again,
‘The heart out of the bosom
Was never given in vain;
’Tis paid with sighs a plenty
And sold for endless rue.’
And I am two-and-twenty,
And oh, ’tis true, ’tis true.
(Adams, Bax, Bliss, Butterworth, Gardiner, Gibbs, Gurney, Orr)
There pass the careless people (ASL 14)1
There pass the careless people
That call their souls their own:
Here by the road I loiter,
How idle and alone.
[Ah, past the plunge of plummet2,
In seas I cannot sound,
My heart and soul and senses,
World without end, are drowned.]
His folly has not fellow
Beneath the blue of day
That gives to man or woman
His heart and soul away.
[There flowers no balm to sain3 him
From east of earth to west
That’s lost for everlasting
The heart out of his breast.
Here by the labouring highway
With empty hands I stroll:
Sea-deep, till doomsday morning,
Lie lost my heart and soul.]
(Finzi)
Bredon Hill (ASL 21)1
In summertime on Bredon
The bells they sound so clear;
Round both the shires2 they ring them
In steeples far and near,
A happy noise to hear.
Here of a Sunday morning
My love and I would lie,
And see the coloured3 counties,
And hear the larks so high
About us in the sky.
The bells would ring to call her
In valleys miles away:
‘Come all to church, good people;
Good people, come and pray.’
But here my love would stay.
And I would turn and answer
Among the springing thyme,
‘Oh, peal upon our wedding,
And we will hear the chime,
And come to church in time.’
But when the snows at Christmas
On Bredon top were strown,
My love rose up so early
And stole out unbeknown
And went to church alone.
They tolled the one bell only,
Groom there was none to see,
The mourners followed after,
And so to church went she,
And would not wait for me.
The bells they sound on Bredon,
And still the steeples hum.
‘Come all to church, good people,’ –
Oh, noisy bells, be dumb;
I hear you, I will come.
(Burrows, Butterworth, Duke, Peel, Vaughan Williams, Young)
The street sounds to the soldiers’ tread (ASL 22)1
The street sounds to the soldiers’ tread,
And out we troop to see:
A single redcoat2 turns his head,
He turns and looks at me.
My man, from sky to sky’s so far,
We never crossed before;
Such leagues apart the world’s ends are,
We’re like to meet no more;
What thoughts at heart have you and I
We cannot stop to tell;
But dead or living, drunk or dry,
Soldier, I wish you well.
(Berkeley, Ireland, Peel)
On the idle hill of summer (ASL 35)1
On the idle hill of summer,
Sleepy with the flow of streams,
Far I hear the steady drummer
Drumming like a noise in dreams.
Far and near and low and louder
On the roads of earth go by,
Dear to friends and food for powder2,
Soldiers marching, all to die.
East and west on fields forgotten
Bleach the bones of comrades slain,
Lovely lads and dead and rotten;
None that go return again.
Far the calling bugles hollo,
High the screaming fife replies,
Gay the files of scarlet follow:
Woman bore me,3 I will rise.
(Butterworth, Gurney)
White in the moon the long road lies (ASL 36)
White in the moon the long road lies,
The moon stands blank1 above;
White in th
e moon the long road lies
That leads me from my love.
Still hangs the hedge without a gust,
Still, still the shadows stay:
My feet upon the moonlit dust
Pursue the ceaseless way.
The world is round, so travellers tell,
And straight though reach the track,
Trudge on, trudge on, ’twill all be well,
The way will guide one back.
But ere the circle homeward hies
Far, far must it remove:
White in the moon the long road lies
That leads me from my love.
(Burrows)
Think no more, lad (ASL 49)
Think no more, lad; laugh, be jolly:
Why should men make haste to die?
Empty heads and tongues a-talking
Make the rough road easy walking,
And the feather pate of folly
Bears the falling sky.
Oh, ’tis jesting, dancing, drinking
Spins the heavy world around.
If young hearts were not so clever,
Oh, they would be young for ever:
Think no more; ’tis only thinking
Lays lads underground.
(Butterworth)
Into my heart (ASL 40)
Into my heart an air that kills
From yon far country blows:
What are those blue remembered hills,1
What spires, what farms are those?
That is the land of lost content,
I see it shining plain,
The happy highways where I went
And cannot come again.
(Corp, Duke, Gurney, Orr)
The lads in their hundreds (ASL 23)
The lads in their hundreds to Ludlow1 come in for the fair,
There’s men from the barn and the forge and the mill and the fold,
The lads for the girls and the lads for the liquor are there,
And there with the rest are the lads that will never be old.
There’s chaps from the town and the field and the till2 and the cart,
And many to count are the stalwart, and many the brave,
And many the handsome of face and the handsome of heart,
And few that will carry their looks or their truth to the grave.
I wish one could know them, I wish there were tokens to tell
The fortunate fellows that now you can never discern;
And then one could talk with them friendly and wish them farewell
And watch them depart on the way that they will not return.
But now you may stare as you like and there’s nothing to scan;
And brushing your elbow unguessed-at and not to be told
They carry back bright to the coiner the mintage of man,
The lads that will die in their glory and never be old.
(Butterworth, Finzi, Gurney, Moeran, Orr)
RALPH VAUGHAN WILLIAMS: On Wenlock Edge, for tenor, string quartet and piano (1908–9/1911)
On Wenlock Edge (ASL 31)1
On Wenlock Edge2 the wood’s in trouble;
His forest fleece the Wrekin3 heaves;
The gale, it plies the saplings double,
And thick on Severn snow the leaves.
’Twould blow like this through holt and hanger4
When Uricon5 the city stood:
’Tis the old wind in the old anger,
But then it threshed another wood.
Then, ’twas before my time, the Roman
At yonder heaving hill would stare:
The blood that warms an English yeoman,
The thoughts that hurt him, they were there.
There, like the wind through woods in riot,
Through him the gale of life blew high;
The tree of man was never quiet:
Then ’twas the Roman, now ’tis I.
The gale, it plies the saplings double,
It blows so hard, ’twill soon be gone:
To-day the Roman and his trouble
Are ashes under Uricon.
(Gurney)
From far, from eve and morning (ASL 32)
From far, from eve and morning
And yon twelve-winded sky,1
The stuff of life to knit2 me
Blew hither: here am I.
Now – for a breath I tarry
Nor yet disperse apart –
Take my hand quick3 and tell me,
What have you in your heart.
Speak now, and I will answer;
How shall I help you, say;
Ere to the wind’s twelve quarters
I take my endless way.
(Burrows)
Is my team ploughing (ASL 27)1
‘Is my team ploughing,
That I was used to drive
And hear the harness jingle
When I was man alive?’
Ay, the horses trample,
The harness jingles now;
No change though you lie under
The land you used to plough.
[‘Is football playing
Along the river shore,
With lads to chase the leather,
Now I stand up no more?’
Ay, the ball is flying,
The lads play heart and soul;
The goal stands up, the keeper
Stands up to keep the goal.]
‘Is my girl happy,
That I thought hard to leave,
And has she tired of weeping
As she lies down at eve?’
Ay, she lies down lightly,
She lies not down to weep:
Your girl is well contented.
Be still, my lad, and sleep.
‘Is my friend hearty,
Now I am thin and pine,
And has he found to sleep in
A better bed than mine?’
Yes, lad, I lie easy,
I lie as lads would choose;
I cheer a dead man’s sweetheart,
Never ask me whose.
(Burrows, Butterworth, Gurney, Orr)
Oh, when I was in love with you (ASL 18)
Oh, when I was in love with you,
Then I was clean and brave,
And miles around the wonder grew
How well did I behave.
And now the fancy passes by,
And nothing will remain,
And miles around they’ll say that I
Am quite myself again.
(Corp, Duke, Orr)
Bredon Hill
See above, under Somervell.
Clun (ASL 50)
[Clunton and Clunbury,
Clungunford and Clun,
Are the quietest places
Under the sun.]1
In valleys of springs of rivers,
By Ony2 and Teme and Clun,
The country for easy livers,
The quietest under the sun,
We still had sorrows to lighten,
One could not be always glad,
And lads knew trouble at Knighton3
When I was a Knighton lad.
By bridges that Thames runs under,
In London, the town built ill,
’Tis sure small matter for wonder
If sorrow is with one still.
And if as a lad grows older
The troubles he bears are more,
He carries his griefs on a shoulder
That handselled4 them long before.
Where shall one halt to deliver
This luggage I’d lief set down?
Not Thames, not Teme is the river,
Nor London nor Knighton the town:
’Tis a long way further than Knighton,
A quieter place than Clun,
Where doomsday may thunder and lighten
And little ’twill matter to one.
RALPH VAUGHAN WILLIAMS: Along the Field, eight Housman songs for voice and piano (c.1927, rev. 1954/1954)
We’ll to the woods no more (LP, Prologue)
We’ll to the woods no more,
The laurels all are cut,1
The bowers are bare of bay
That once the Muses wore;
The year draws in the day
And soon will evening shut:
The laurels all are cut,
We’ll to the woods no more.
Oh we’ll no more, no more
To the leafy woods away,
To the high wild woods of laurel
And the bowers of bay no more.
(Finzi, Ireland, Thomas)
Along the field (ASL 26)
Along the field as we came by
A year ago, my love and I,
The aspen over stile and stone
Was talking to itself alone.
‘Oh who are these that kiss and pass?
A country lover and his lass;
Two lovers looking to be wed;
And time shall put them both to bed,
But she shall lie with earth above,
And he beside another love.’
And sure enough beneath the tree
There walks another love with me,
And overhead the aspen heaves
Its rainy-sounding silver leaves;
And I spell1 nothing in their stir,
But now perhaps they speak to her,
And plain for her to understand