The Penguin Book of English Song

by Richard Stokes

  Hilaire Belloc: from Collected Poems. Reprinted by permission of Peters, Fraser & Dunlop, Ltd. on behalf of the Estate of Hilaire Belloc.

  Walter de la Mare: from The Complete Poems of Walter de la Mare, copyright © 1975, Walter de la Mare. Reprinted by permission of the Literary Trustees of Walter de la Mare and The Society of Authors as their representative.

  Wilfrid William Gibson: from Whin. Reprinted by permission of the Wilfrid Gibson Literary Estate.

  Robert Graves: from The Complete Poems: Volume I, copyright © 1995, Trustees of the Robert Graves Copyright Trust. Reprinted by permission of Carcanet.

  John Masefield: from The Collected Poems of John Masefield. Reprinted by permission of The Society of Authors as the representative of the Estate of John Masefield.

  Edith Sitwell: from Collected Poems. Reprinted by permission of Peters Fraser & Dunlop, Ltd. on behalf of the Estate of Edith Sitwell.

  Dylan Thomas: from The Collected Poems of Dylan Thomas. Reprinted by permission of David Higham Associates, Ltd.

  THE BEGINNING

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  PENGUIN CLASSICS

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  Penguin Books is part of the Penguin Random House group of companies whose addresses can be found at global.penguinrandomhouse.com.

  First published 2016

  Copyright © Richard Stokes, 2016

  The acknowledgements on here constitute an extension of this copyright page

  Cover Design: Richard Green

  The moral right of the author has been asserted

  ISBN: 978-0-141-98255-7

  1. Edith Sitwell adored this poem and wrote of it in A Poet’s Notebook (1943): ‘Much of the variation in sound of this wonderful poetry is due (as I have said already) to the fact that some lines are divided sharply in two by a deep pause, whilst at other times there is no pause at all, or else several small pauses. An example is that miracle, the first rondel of “Merciles Beaute” – to me the only perfect rondel in the English language. The English rondel is usually a giggling, trivial horror; but this poem has a most clear, noble, and grave beauty.’

  2. eyes.

  3. slay.

  4. heal.

  5. feign.

  6. Chaucer enjoyed alluding to his own portliness.

  7. I care not.

  8. slate.

  9. course of action.

  1. The composer writes in his Note to the printed vocal score: ‘In presenting Chaucer to a modern public, some degree of adaptation and translation has been necessary in order to make the words generally intelligible. Archaic forms have been freely modified […]. It is hoped that Chaucer’s lyric beauty and the inimitable vividness of his characterization will remain clear to all readers.’ We have chosen to print Chaucer’s original text, which, with the help of footnotes, is not difficult to understand. Dyson’s work is scored for strings, two flutes, two oboes, two clarinets, two bassoons, four horns, three trumpets, three trombones, tuba, kettledrums, two percussion players (cymbals, bass drum, triangle and tambourine), harp (ad lib.), and organ (ad lib.) The ‘Prologue’ is followed by twelve movements: an ‘envoi’ and character sketches taken from the ‘Prologue’: ‘The Knight’, ‘The Squire’, ‘The Nun’, ‘The Monk’, ‘The Clerk of Oxenford’, ‘The Haberdasher and his Fraternity. The Merchant’, ‘The Sergeant of the Law. The Franklin’, ‘The Shipman’, ‘The Doctor of Physic’, ‘The Wife of Bath’ and ‘The Poor Parson of a Town’.

  2. sweet.

  3. moisture.

  4. whose creative influence brings flowers into blossom.

  5. the warm west wind – hence a generative force.

  6. branches.

  7. Ram = the zodiacal sign of Aries. A symbol of sexual potency, it gives a sense of vital processes at work on the land.

  8. so worketh nature in their hearts.

  9. pilgrims who had returned from the Holy Land, bearing a palm-leaf or palm-branch in their hand.

  10. to distant saints known in sundry lands.

  11. Thomas à Becket, Archbishop of Canterbury. Murdered in 1170 at the behest of Henry II, Thomas was canonized three years later and his relics placed in a coffer at the base of a shrine in one of the cathedral chapels. One end of the coffer was glazed – which allowed the faithful to glimpse the relics on religious occasions. According to contemporary figures, the shrine was visited by 100,000 pilgrims in the jubilee year of 1420. A pilgrimage, though still an act of piety, had changed in character by the time Chaucer wrote his poem, and offered for some the opportunity of seeing the world and enjoying the companionship of people from all walks of life. Chaucer depicts the life and manners of English men and women as he knew them.

  12. sick.

  13. it befell.

  14. The Tabard was an inn in Southwark, a suburb of London south of London Bridge. It continued to exist until it was destroyed by fire in 1676.

  15. by chance come together.

  16. made very comfortable.

  17. it seems to me a logical arrangement.

  1. ‘Some of Dunbar’s finest work was done in religious poetry of a more ordinary kind. He does not deal much in solitary devotional feeling, like the Metaphysicals or the Victorians; he is public and liturgical. His two supreme achievements in this vein are his poems on the Nativity and on the Resurrection. The first of these (Rorate celi desuper) might almost claim to be in one sense the most lyrical of all English poems – that is, the hardest of all English poems simply to read, the hardest not to sing. We read it alone and at night – and are almost shocked, on laying the book down, to find that the choir and organ existed only in our imagination. It has none of the modern – the German or Dickensian – attributes of Christmas. It breathes rather the intoxication of universal spring and summons all Nature to salute “the cleir sone quhome no clud devouris” […] I would hesitate to read Milton’s Hymn on the same evening with this.’ (C. S. Lewis: English Literature in the Sixteenth Century Excluding Drama (1954)).

  2. See Isa. xlv. 8: ‘Shower, O heavens, from above, and let the skies rain down righteousness’.

  3. See Isa. ix. 6: ‘For to us a child is born, to us a son is given […]’

  4. The hierarchies of heaven, as elaborated in the Middle Ages. The first comprised seraphim, cherubim and thrones; the second, dominations, virtues and powers; the third, principalities, archangels and angels.

  5. Cf. the ‘Ave Maria’: ‘benedicta tu in muieribus, et benedictus fructus ventris tui’.

  6. the highest heaven where God and His angels dwelled.

  1. Corp’s cycle comprises songs to poems on London by William Dunbar, Lord Byron, William Blake, William Wordsworth and Henry Carey.

  2. ‘kell’ = a woman’s head-dress.

  1. The poem forms part of Skelton’s Garlande or Chapelet of Laurell.

  2. Margaret Hussey, née Blount, was the wife of John Hussey. Skelton puns on her name, Margaret, which also means ‘daisy’, the ‘mydsomer flowre’.

  3. that towers aloft.

  4. Hypsipyle.

  5. Cassandra.

  1. storing liquor in barrels.

  2. boozy, intoxicated.

  3. snub-nosed.

  4. strut like a neatly attired woman.

  5. coat with sleeves.

  6. cloak.

  7. affected, simpering manner.

  8. clothes.

  9. decked.

  10. gown, skirt, outer-petticoat.

  11. large lump.

  12. twisted, contorted
.

  13. trinket.

  14. pretty trifle.

  15. skull.

  16. Elinour Rumming was a real person – she kept an ale-house in Sothray (Surrey), at Leatherhead, traditionally associated with ‘The Running Horse’. She is mentioned in the Court Rolls of Leatherhead for 1525.

  17. dwelling.

  18. place.

  19. beery old woman.

  20. akin.

  21. heady, strong.

  22. labourers.

  23. destitute.

  24. with dress unfastened.

  25. muddy.

  26. A pity that Vaughan Williams, perhaps prudishly, omitted the following lines: Wyth theyr naked pappes,

  That flyppes and flappes,

  That wygges and it wagges

  Lyke tawny saffron bagges;

  27. irregularly marked.

  28. occasion.

  29. to malt and to mould.

  30. an array of rascals.

  31. dregs.

  32. a tub for hog-wash – a reference to heavy drinking.

  33. Galicia.

  34. Portuguese.

  35. certainly, indeed.

  36. riotous gathering.

  37. cold in the head.

  38. a long narrow strip of cloth.

  39. a fermented drink made from malted barley.

  40. throat.

  41. jabbering.

  42. fence made of stakes driven into the ground.

  43. gimlet.

  44. a story or romance in verse.

  1. The poem occurs in Speke, Parott (1521), an extraordinary piece which, among other things, criticizes the new learning, Wolsey’s power politics and the modish extravagance in manners and dress. Skelton here adapts an amorous song that was widely known at the end of the fifteenth century.

  1. the room where actors dressed for the stage.

  1. The first six lines of this poem are identical to the final verse, except for the first three words, which read ‘Oh cruell Time’, of Ralegh’s poem ‘Nature that washt her hands in milke’, although in the seventeenth century it was thought to be the poem that he wrote the night before his execution.

  1. Shostakovich rearranged the work for reduced orchestra (piccolo, bassoon, two horns, timpani, percussion, celesta and a small body of strings) in 1971, giving it the Opus number 140.

  2. The poem is probably addressed to Ralegh’s elder son, Walter (born 1593), who was indeed ‘a wilde wagg’, and not to his second son, Carew, who only knew his father as a prisoner and an ageing man.

  1. William Henry Harris (1883–1973), composer, organist and choir-master, was Organist at New College and Christ Church, Oxford, before moving to St George’s Chapel, Windsor, in 1933, where he composed many of his finest works. He wrote music for the Three Choirs Festival, conducted at the 1937 and 1953 coronations, and was appointed KCVO in 1954. He also composed the lovely hymn tune Alberta, for John Henry Newman’s ‘Lead, Kindly Light’ – see p. 423.

  1. durable, enduring.

  2. giving birth to (punning on ‘conceiue’).

  3. give out in various directions; share.

  4. breathe desire towards.

  5. makes an impression in.

  6. intact organs.

  7. tendencies.

  8. of marriage.

  1. The poem illustrates the teaching of Castiglione’s Cortegiano, 4: 338: ‘To escape the torment caused by absence and to enjoy beauty without suffering, with the help of reason the courtier should turn his desire completely away from the body to beauty alone […], creating it in his imagination as an abstract distinct from any material form.’

  2. presence.

  1. emblem of Juno as goddess of marriage.

  2. Cupid.

  3. antiphonal song rather than songs of praise: the cuckoo’s song echoes.

  4. owed.

  5. rule.

  6. encouraging indolence.

  1. The poem, which appears in Astrophil and Stella, attempts to solve a dispute concerning Stella’s Voice and Face. They both appear before Common Sence, the Judge, in the court of True Delight. They hire Music and Beauty as lawyers who will plead their causes; and they bring Wonder and Love as character witnesses, and the Ear and Eye as technical witnesses. The Judge, unable to decide, appeals to Reason.

  2. debate.

  3. the lawyers of line 14.

  4. The court.

  5. hire.

  6. legal objections.

  7. arbitrator.

  1. ‘My true love hath my hart’ forms part of Sidney’s Arcadia, a pastoral-chivalric romance that exists in three versions. The earliest was written before 1580 in five prose books that are punctuated, like Goethe’s Wilhelm Meisters Lehrjahre, with lyrical poems. Sidney later revised and extended the work, weaving a web of stories into the new structure; his revision had reached Book III when he died, leaving the work unfinished. It was published posthumously in quarto in 1590; and in 1593 the Countess of Pembroke completed the work and published it in folio. ‘My true love hath my hart’, though one of the most exquisite lyrics from Sidney’s Arcadia, has a decidedly comic context within the work: Dorus, in an attempt to get Damaetas’ wife, Miso, out of the way, invents an imaginary scenario, claiming to have seen her husband lying with his head in the lap of the shepherdess Charita. It is she who sings the song.

  2. do without.

  3. its wound.

  4. the sight of me.

  5. exchange.

  1. Britten composed A Charm of Lullabies for the voice of Nancy Evans, who created the role of Nancy (a name chosen deliberately by the librettist, Eric Crozier) in Albert Herring. The songs are ‘A cradle song’ (William Blake), ‘The Highland balou’ (Robert Burns), ‘Sephestia’s lullaby’ (Robert Greene), ‘A charm’ (Thomas Randolph) and ‘The nurse’s song’ (John Phillip). The title of the cycle puns on the word ‘charm’, which also means ‘to put to sleep’. It derives from the Latin ‘carmen’ = ‘song’.

  1. cold.

  2. The young traveller Tobias is guided and protected by the archangel Raphael (Book of Tobit).

  3. recognize, honour.

  4. clothing.

  5. stakes that are sharpened to defend a fortification.

  6. forces.

  7. pitched.

  1. Britten set the same poem – but with a different choice of verses – as part of Thy King’s Birthday (1931).

  2. simple.

  3. precious/eastern.

  1. Though Marlowe’s words were not published till 1599, after his death, they probably became popular in song form during his lifetime. The poem spawned several others, including Ralegh’s ‘The Nimphs reply to the Sheepheard’ and Donne’s parody ‘The bait’. It first appeared in The Passionate Pilgrim, an unauthorized anthology of verse by various authors published by William Jaggard in 1599 and attributed on the title-page to Shakespeare. It was then published in a slightly longer version in England’s Helicon (1600), which we print here. Marlowe quotes the poem in The Jew of Malta, and Sir Hugh Evans sings a garbled version of one verse in The Merry Wives of Windsor, Act III, sc. i, 17–26 – possibly to the tune (by Corkine himself?) that appears in William Corkine’s Second Booke of Ayres (1612). George Chapman also quotes a variation of the poem in The Blind Beggar of Alexandria (1596). Another version, with an extra stanza, appears in the second edition of Walton’s The Compleat Angler (1655).

  2. smock worn by a shepherd.

  1. beauty without kindness cannot be enjoyed.

  1. Cardamine pratensis, or Cuckoo-flower. The name implies cuckoldry.

  2. Ranunculus bulbosus, or Crowfoot.

  3. Cf. ‘up with the lark’.

  4. copulate.

  1. to warm his hands.

  2. cool.

  3. sententious saying

  4. crab-apples.

  1. ‘Fancy’ is probably Poulenc’s last song. In a letter to Bernac dated 4 August 1959, he writes: ‘Marion Harewood has asked me, so sweetly, to participate in a little collection of cho
ruses for children, with Ben, Kodály, etc. … that I cannot refuse, but please guide me regarding accents and the exact meaning of the text, which I get the gist of. “Where is” must be sung on two notes, mustn’t it? Of course I will show you the thing before I send it.’ Poulenc dedicated the song to Miles and Flora, the children from Britten’s opera The Turn of the Screw. The three versions by Britten, Kodály and Poulenc were published in Classical Songs for Children, edited by Marion Harewood and Ronald Duncan.