The Penguin Book of English Song
Page 60
No roses are pale enough for me;
The sound of the waters of separation
Surpasseth roses and melody.
By the sad waters of separation
Dimly I hear from an hidden place
The sigh of mine ancient adoration:
Hardly can I remember your face.
If you be dead, no proclamation
Sprang to me over the waste, gray sea:
Living, the waters of separation
Sever for ever your soul from me.
No man knoweth our desolation;
Memory pales of the old delight;
While the sad waters of separation
Bear us on to the ultimate night.
In spring
See how the trees and the osiers lithe
Are green bedecked and the woods are blithe,
The meadows have donned their cape of flowers,
The air is soft with the sweet May showers,
And the birds make melody:
But the spring of the soul, the spring of the soul,
Cometh no more for you or for me.
The lazy hum of the busy bees
Murmureth through the almond trees;
The jonquil flaunteth a gay, blonde head,
The primrose peeps from a mossy bed,
And the violets scent the lane.
But the flowers of the soul, the flowers of the soul,
For you and for me bloom never again.
Spleen1
I was not sorrowful, I could not weep,
And all my memories were put to sleep.
I watched the river grow more white and strange,
All day till evening I watched it change.
All day till evening I watched the rain
Beat wearily upon the window pane.
I was not sorrowful, but only tired
Of everything that ever I desired.
Her lips, her eyes, all day became to me
The shadow of a shadow utterly.
All day mine hunger for her heart became
Oblivion, until the evening came,
And left me sorrowful, inclined to weep,
With all my memories that could not sleep.
(Ireland)
Vitae summa brevis spem nos vetat incohare longam1
They are not long, the weeping and the laughter,
Love and desire and hate:
I think they have no portion in us after
We pass the gate.
They are not long, the days of wine and roses:
Out of a misty dream
Our path emerges for a while, then closes
Within a dream.
(Quilter, C. Scott)
ROGER QUILTER: Four Songs of Sorrow, Op. 10 (1907/1908)
A coronal
With His songs and Her days
To His Lady and to Love
Violets and leaves of vine,
Into a frail, fair wreath
We gather and entwine:
A wreath for Love to wear,
Fragrant as his own breath,
To crown his brow divine
All day till night is near,
Violets and leaves of vine
We gather and entwine.
Violets and leaves of vine
For Love that lives a day,
We gather and entwine.
All day till Love is dead,
Till eve falls, cold and gray,
These blossoms, yours and mine,
Love wears upon his head.
Violets and leaves of vine
We gather and entwine.
Violets and leaves of vine
For Love when poor Love dies
We gather and entwine.
This wreath that lives a day
Over his pale, cold eyes,
Kissed shut by Proserpine,
At set of sun we lay:
Violets and leaves of vine
We gather and entwine.
Vitae summa brevis spem nos vetat incohare longam [Passing dreams]
See above, under Delius.
Beata solitudo
[A land of silence]
What land of Silence,
Where pale stars shine
On apple-blossom
And dew-drenched vine,
Is yours and mine?
The silent valley
That we will find,
Where all the voices
Of humankind
Are left behind.
There all forgetting,
Forgotten quite,
We will repose us,
With our delight
Hid out of sight.
The world forsaken,
And out of mind
Honour and labour,
We shall not find
The stars unkind.
And men shall travail,
And laugh and weep;
But we have vistas
Of gods asleep,
With dreams as deep.
A land of silence,
Where pale stars shine
On apple-blossoms
And dew-drenched vine,
Be yours and mine!
In spring
See above, under Delius.
ARNOLD SCHOENBERG: from Four Orchestral Songs, Op. 22/1
Seraphita
[translated by Stefan George] (1913)
Come not before me now, O visionary face!
Me tempest-tost, and borne along life’s passionate sea;
Troublous and dark and stormy though my passage be;
Not here and now may we commingle or embrace,
Lest the loud anguish of the waters should efface
The bright illumination of thy memory,
Which dominates the night; rest, far away from me,
In the serenity of thine abiding-place!
But when the storm is highest, and the thunders blare,
And sea and sky are riven, O moon of all my night!
Stood down but once in pity of my great despair,
And let thine hand, though over late to help, alight
But once upon my pale eyes and my drowning hair,
Before the great waves conquer in the last vain fight.
HILAIRE BELLOC
(1870–1953)
Song also is the mistress of memory, and though a scent is more powerful, a song is more general, as an instrument for the resurrection of lost things […]. It is the best of all trades, to make songs, and the second best to sing them.
HILAIRE BELLOC: ‘On Song’, from On Everything (1909)
Belloc was born in Saint-Cloud near Paris, the son of a French barrister. Having done French military service, he came to England and was educated at Newman’s Oratory School, and Balliol College, Oxford. He spoke English with a fluty, rather high-pitched French voice with a pronounced French ‘r’, according to Frank Swinnerton in The Georgian Literary Scene 1910–1935 (1935). He became an English Liberal MP and a writer of great versatility, publishing travel books, biographies, literary criticism, and essays on social and religious topics. He was a committed Catholic and advocated in The Servile State (1912) – one of his books that satirized Edwardian society – a return to medieval guilds. On the outbreak of the First World War he commented on military operations for Land and Water. He wrote a well-regarded History of England (1915) and many novels, of which his own favourite was Belinda (1928). It is, however, as a poet that he is best remembered: Verses and Sonnets and The Bad Child’s Book of Beasts were published in 1896, to be followed by Cautionary Tales (1907) and Sonnets and Verses (1923). In 1900 he met Chesterton, with whom he collaborated on several works. Their friendship (both wrote for The Speaker) prompted G. B. Shaw to dub them ‘Chester-belloc’. Many of Belloc’s novels, such as Mr Clutterbuck’s Election (1908), The Girondin (1911) and Belinda, were illustrated by Chesterton. He became a naturalized British subject in 1902, and Frank Swinnerton has left us a charming eye-witness description of the poet at a Fabian meeting:
I still
have very clearly in memory the appearance of Belloc as I first saw him. He must have been slightly over thirty, not very tall but very broad-shouldered and with that fine head cocked at its usual considering angle. He bent over a small table, smiling, his big white shirt-front bulging; and he surveyed the congregated Fabians as if they were simple-minded children to whom he was unfolding the wonders of the universe. In fact, he was explaining, among other things, with much salt, a few fallacies which lay fatally behind the principles of their own movement. He was confident, gay, rich in lively asides or extravagant alternative phrases. He made everybody laugh – that was intended – as his tongue played with the words of triumphant ridicule; and having made them laugh he slew them. Never was there such a Fabian slaughter.
He retired at a relatively early age to his estate in Sussex (see ‘Ha’nacker Mill’), where he would read Trollope and entertain.
LIZA LEHMANN: from Four Cautionary Tales and a Moral (1909)
Matilda
Who told Lies, and was Burned to Death
Matilda told such Dreadful Lies,
It made one Gasp and Stretch one’s Eyes;
Her Aunt, who, from her Earliest Youth,
Had kept a Strict Regard for Truth,
Attempted to Believe Matilda:
The effort very nearly killed her,
And would have done so, had not She
Discovered this Infirmity.
For once, towards the Close of Day,
Matilda, growing tired of play,
And finding she was left alone,
Went tiptoe to the Telephone
And summoned the Immediate Aid
Of London’s Noble Fire-Brigade.
Within an hour the Gallant Band
Were pouring in on every hand,
From Putney, Hackney Downs and Bow,
With Courage high and Hearts a-glow
They galloped, roaring through the Town,
‘Matilda’s House is Burning Down!’
Inspired by British Cheers and Loud
Proceeding from the Frenzied Crowd,
They ran their ladders through a score
Of windows on the Ball Room Floor;
And took Peculiar Pains to Souse
The Pictures up and down the House,
Until Matilda’s Aunt succeeded
In showing them they were not needed
And even then she had to pay
To get the Men to go away!
. . . . .
It happened that a few Weeks later
Her Aunt was off to the Theatre
To see that Interesting Play
The Second Mrs. Tanqueray1.
She had refused to take her Niece
To hear this Entertaining Piece:
A Deprivation Just and Wise
To Punish her for Telling Lies.
That Night a Fire did break out –
You should have heard Matilda Shout!
You should have heard her Scream and Bawl,
And throw the window up and call
To People passing in the Street –
(The rapidly increasing Heat
Encouraging her to obtain
Their confidence) – but all in vain!
For every time She shouted ‘Fire!’
They only answered ‘Little Liar!’
And therefore when her Aunt returned,
Matilda, and the House, were Burned.
Henry King1
Who chewed bits of String, and was early cut off in Dreadful Agonies.
The Chief Defect of Henry King
Was chewing little bits of String.
At last he swallowed some which tied
Itself in ugly Knots inside.
Physicians of the Utmost Fame
Were called at once; but when they came
They answered, as they took their Fees,
‘There is no Cure for this Disease.
Henry will very soon be dead.’
His Parents stood about his Bed
Lamenting his Untimely Death,
When Henry, with his Latest Breath,
Cried – ‘Oh, my Friends, be warned by me,
That Breakfast, Dinner, Lunch and Tea
Are all the Human Frame requires …’
With that the Wretched Child expires.
GRAHAM PEEL
The early morning (1910)
The moon on the one hand, the dawn on the other:
The moon is my sister, the dawn is my brother.
The moon on my left and the dawn on my right.
My brother, good morning: my sister, good night.
PETER WARLOCK: Three Belloc Songs (1927/1927)
Ha’nacker Mill1
Sally is gone that was so kindly,
Sally is gone from Ha’nacker Hill.
And the Briar grows ever since then so blindly
And ever since then the clapper is still,
And the sweeps2 have fallen from Ha’nacker Mill.
Ha’nacker Hill is in Desolation:
Ruin a-top and a field unploughed.
And spirits that call on a fallen nation
Spirits that loved her calling aloud:
Spirits abroad in a windy cloud.
Spirits that call and no one answers;
Ha’nacker’s down and England’s done.
Wind and Thistle for pipe and dancers
And never a ploughman under the Sun.
Never a ploughman. Never a one.
(Gurney)
The night
Most holy Night, that still dost keep
The keys of all the doors of sleep,
To me when my tired eyelids close
Give thou repose.
And let the far lament of them
That chaunt the dead day’s requiem
Make in my ears, who wakeful lie,
Soft lullaby.
Let them that guard the horned moon
By my bedside their memories croon.
So shall I have new dreams and blest
In my brief rest.
Fold your great wings about my face,
Hide dawning from my resting-place,
And cheat me with your false delight,
Most Holy Night.
(Gurney, Herbert, O’Neill, Rubbra)
My own country1
I shall go without companions,
And with nothing in my hand;
I shall pass through many places
That I cannot understand –
Until I come to my own country,
Which is a pleasant land!
The trees that grow in my own country
Are the beech tree and the yew;
Many stand together,
And some stand few.
In the month of May in my own country
All the woods are new.
When I get to my own country
I shall lie down and sleep;
I shall watch in the valleys
The long flocks of sheep.
And then I shall dream, for ever and all,
A good dream and deep.
BENJAMIN BRITTEN
The birds (1929, rev. 1934/1935)1
When Jesus Christ was four years old,
The angels brought Him toys of gold,
Which no man ever had bought or sold.
And yet with these He would not play.
He made Him small fowl out of clay,
And blessed them till they flew away:
Tu creasti Domine.2
Jesus Christ, Thou child so wise,
Bless mine hands and fill mine eyes,
And bring my soul to Paradise.
(Bush, Davies, Gurney, Warlock)
RICHARD HAGEMAN
Tarantella
[Miranda] (c.1940)
Do you remember an Inn,
Miranda?
Do you remember an Inn?
And the tedding1 and the spreading
Of the straw for a bedding,
And the fle
as that tease in the High Pyrenees,
And the wine that tasted of the tar?
And the cheers and the jeers of the young muleteers
(Under the vine of the dark verandah)?
Do you remember an Inn, Miranda,
Do you remember an Inn?
And the cheers and the jeers of the young muleteers
Who hadn’t got a penny,
And who weren’t paying any,
And the hammer at the doors and the Din?
And the Hip! Hop! Hap!
Of the clap
Of the hands to the twirl and the swirl
Of the girl gone chancing,
Glancing,
Dancing,
Backing and advancing,
Snapping of a clapper to the spin
Out and in –
And the Ting, Tong, Tang of the Guitar!
Do you remember an Inn,
Miranda,
Do you remember an Inn?
[Never more;
Miranda,
Never more.
Only the high peaks hoar:
And Aragon a torrent at the door.
No sound
In the walls of the Halls where falls
The tread
Of the feet of the dead to the ground
No sound:
But the boom
Of the far Waterfall like Doom.]
(Elgar, Gurney)
W(ILLIAM) H(ENRY) DAVIES
(1871–1940)
When Mr. Davies’ book came to hand my imagination failed me. I could not place him. There were no author’s compliments, no publisher’s compliments, indeed no publisher in the ordinary channel of the trade in minor poetry. The author, as far as I could guess, had walked into a printer’s or stationer’s shop; handed in his manuscript; and ordered his book as he might have ordered a pair of boots. It was marked ‘price half a crown’. An accompanying letter asked me very civilly if I required a half-crown book of verses; and if so, would I please send the author the half-crown: if not, would I return the book. This was attractively simple and sensible. Further, the handwriting was remarkably delicate and individual: the sort of handwriting one might expect from Shelley or George Meredith. I opened the book, and was more puzzled than ever; for before I had read three lines I perceived that the author was a real poet. His work was not in the least strenuous or modern: there was in it no sign that he had ever read anything later than Cowper or Crabbe, not even Byron, Shelley or Keats, much less Morris, Swinburne, Tennyson, or Henley and Kipling. There was indeed no sign of his ever having read anything otherwise than as a child reads. The result was a freedom from literary vulgarity which was like a draught of clear water in a desert. Here, I saw, was a genuine innocent, writing odds and ends of verse about odds and ends of things, living quite out of the world in which such things are usually done, and knowing no better (or rather no worse) than to get his book made by the appropriate craftsman and hawk it round like any other ware.