The Penguin Book of English Song Page 11

  The fifteen poems of The Forrest, printed in the Folio of 1616, are concerned with ‘the virtuous life’. Most of the poems are apostrophes to virtue, as exemplified in a number of individuals, especially Sir Philip Sidney, whose influence, and that of his family, is felt throughout. Juxtaposed with these poems about paragons are the wonderful love lyrics, such as ‘Drinke to me, onely, with thine eyes’ and ‘Come my Celia, let us prove’, which express a sensuality and a delight in the pleasures of the world, and imply that ‘the virtuous life’ is far from easy to attain. This duality is mirrored in the structure of the work: ‘Come, my Celia’, for example, is placed immediately after ‘To the World’, which bears the subtitle ‘A Farewell for a Gentlewoman, Virtuous and Noble’; and ‘Drinke to me, onely, with thine eyes’ follows ‘To Sickness’. The collection ends with ‘To Heaven’, in which a state of grace is finally reached. Under-woods, Jonson’s most varied collection of poems, appeared posthumously in the 1640 Folio edition.

  TRADITIONAL

  Song. To Celia

  [Drinke to me, onely, with thine eyes]1

  Drinke to me, onely, with thine eyes,

  And I will pledge with mine;

  Or leave a kisse but in the cup,

  And Ile not looke for wine.

  The thirst that from the soule doth rise,

  Doth aske a drinke divine:

  But might I of JOVE’S Nectar sup,

  I would not change for thine.

  I sent thee, late, a rosie wreath,

  Not so much honoring thee,

  As giving it a hope, that there

  It could not withered bee.

  But thou thereon did’st onely breath,

  And sent’st it backe to mee:

  Since when it growes, and smells, I sweare,

  Not of itselfe, but thee.2

  ALFONSO FERRABOSCO II

  Song. To Celia (Come my Celia, let us prove1) (1609)

  Come my Celia, let us prove2,

  While we may, the sports of love;

  Time will not be ours, for ever:

  He, at length, our good will sever.

  Spend not then his guifts in vaine.

  Sunnes, that set, may rise againe:

  But if once we loose this light,

  ’Tis, with us, perpetuall night.

  Why should we deferre our joyes?

  Fame, and rumor are but toyes3.

  Cannot we delude the eyes

  Of a few poore houshold spyes?

  Or his easier eares beguile,

  So removed by our wile?

  ’Tis no sinne, loves fruit to steale,

  But the sweet theft to reveale:

  To be taken, to be seene,

  These have crimes accounted beene.

  WILLIAM DENIS BROWNE

  A close friend of Rupert Brooke at Rugby School, Browne (1888–1915) went up to Clare College, Cambridge, in 1907, where he formed influential friendships with Edward Dent, Armstrong Gibbs, Vaughan Williams and the singer Steuart Wilson. Though he matriculated in Greats, he was soon devoting all his energies to music and became an organ scholar at his college. After university he spent some time at the home of Ferruccio Busoni, was appointed assistant music teacher at Repton School and then moved to London as organist of Guy’s Hospital. He wrote reviews for The Times and the New Statesman, gave the first London performance of Berg’s Piano Sonata, and was killed in the Gallipoli campaign on 4 June soon after he had buried Rupert Brooke on the island of Skyros. His compositions are few: church music, orchestral dances, a piano piece, a choral setting of Tennyson’s ‘The Kraken’, an unfinished ballet and eleven songs, including two of Tennyson – ‘Move, eastward, happy earth’ and ‘The snowdrop’ (1910) – the only songs that were published during his lifetime. There are also two early settings of Yeats. It is, however, with his final four songs (settings of Jonson’s ‘Epitaph on Salathiel Pavy’, Lovelace’s ‘To Gratiana dancing and singing’, Constable’s ‘Diaphenia’ and de la Mare’s ‘Arabia’) that his extraordinary promise is manifested.

  Epitaph on S[alomon] P[avy], a Child of Q[ueen] El[izabeth’s] Chapel

  [Epitaph on Salathiel Pavy] (1912/1927)1

  Weepe with me all you that reade

  This little storie:

  And know, for whom a teare you shed,

  Death’s selfe is sorry.

  ’Twas a child, that so did thrive

  In grace, and feature,

  As Heaven and Nature seem’d to strive

  Which own’d the creature.

  Yeeres he numbred scarse thirteene

  When Fates turn’d cruell,

  Yet three fill’d Zodiackes had he beene

  The stages jewell;

  And did act (what now we mone)

  Old men so duely,

  As, sooth, the Parcae2 thought him one,

  He plai’d so truely.

  So, by error, to his fate

  They all consented;

  But viewing him since (alas, too late)

  They have repented.

  And have sought (to give new birth)

  In bathes to steepe him;

  But, being so much too good for earth,

  Heaven vowes to keepe him.

  ROGER QUILTER: from Seven Elizabethan Lyrics, Op. 12 (1907/1908)

  Echo’s song [By a fountainside]1

  Slow, slow, fresh fount, keepe time with my salt teares;

  Yet slower, yet, ô faintly gentle springs:

  List to the heavy part the musique beares,

  Woe weepes out her division2, when shee sings.

  Droupe hearbs, and flowres;

  Fall griefe in showres;

  Our beauties are not ours:

  O, I could still

  (Like melting snow upon some craggie hill,)

  drop, drop, drop, drop,

  Since natures pride is, now, a wither’d daffodill.

  (Gurney, Rorem)

  RALPH VAUGHAN WILLIAMS: from Sir John in Love (1924–8)

  Doe but looke on her eyes1

  Doe but looke, on her eyes! They doe light –

  All that Loue’s world comprizeth!

  Doe but looke on her hayre! it is bright,

  As Loue’s star, when it riseth!

  [Doe but marke, her fore-head’s smoother,

  Then words that sooth her!

  And from her arched browes, such a grace

  Sheds it selfe through the face;

  As alone, there triumphs to the life,

  All the gaine, all the good, of the elements strife!]

  Haue you seene but a bright Lilly grow2

  Before rude hands haue touch’d it?

  Haue you mark’d but the fall of the Snow,

  Before the soyle hath smuch’d it?

  Haue you felt the wooll o’ the Beuer?

  Or Swans downe, euer?

  Or, haue smelt o’ the bud o’ the Bryer?

  Or the Nard i’ the fire?

  Or, haue tasted the bag o’ the Bee?

  O, so white! O, so soft! O, so sweet is shee!

  Song

  [Hedon’s Song]1

  O, that ioy so soone should waste!

  or so sweet a blisse

  as a kiss

  Might not for euer last!

  So sugred, so melting, so soft, so delicious,

  The dew that lies on roses,

  When the morne her selfe discloses,

  is not so precious.

  O, rather then I would it smother,

  Were I to taste such another;

  It should be my wishing

  That I might dye, kissing.

  (Henry Lawes)

  BENJAMIN BRITTEN: from Serenade, Op. 31, for tenor, horn and strings (1943/1944)

  Hymn to Diana1

  Queene and Huntresse, chaste, and faire,

  Now the Sunne is laid to sleepe,

  Seated, in thy siluer chaire,

  State in wonted manner keepe:

  Hesperus intreats thy light,

  Goddesse,
excellently bright.

  Earth, let not thy enuious shade

  Dare it selfe to interpose;

  Cynthias shining orbe was made

  Heauen to cleere, when day did close:

  Blesse us then with wished sight,

  Goddesse, excellently bright.

  Lay thy bow of pearle apart,

  And thy crystall-shining quiuer;

  Giue unto the flying hart

  Space to breathe, how short soeuer:

  Thou that mak’st a day of night,

  Goddesse, excellently bright.

  (Argento)

  JOHN FLETCHER

  (1579–1625)

  He had an excellent wit, which the back-friends to Stage-plays will say, was neither idle, nor well imploy’d. For he and Francis Beaumont Esquire, like Castor and Pollux, (most happy when in conjunction), raised the English to equal the Athenian and Roman theater; Beaumont bringing the ballast of judgement, Fletcher the sail of phantasie, both compounding a Poet to admiration.

  THOMAS FULLER: The History of the Worthies Of England (1662)

  His father witnessed as a priest the execution of Mary Stuart in 1587 and later became Bishop of London. Fletcher studied at Corpus Christi College, Cambridge (where Marlowe had also been a student), but was forced to abandon his studies when his father died bankrupt in 1596. Never wealthy, he wrote frenetically to earn a living: some fifteen plays with Beaumont and sixteen as sole author. In The Woman’s Prize, or The Tamer Tamed (1611) he challenged the notion of male supremacy, inverting Shakespeare’s The Taming of the Shrew. He collaborated with Massinger, Rowley, Middleton, Jonson and Chapman; and also with Shakespeare in The Two Noble Kinsmen (1634) and the lost Cardenio, since the former has both their names on the title-page, and the latter is stated as being by both of them in the Stationers’ Register of 9 September 1653. Fletcher’s role in Henry VIII is more contentious. The play was printed as Shakespeare’s by the editors of the Folio, and it was not until the middle of the nineteenth century that the idea of dual-authorship was mooted. He succeeded Shakespeare as principal writer to the King’s Men. Beaumont and Fletcher’s plays were collected in folio – an honour bestowed otherwise only on Jonson and Shakespeare. According to Aubrey, he died of the plague: ‘John Fletcher, invited to goe with a Knight into Norfolke or Suffolke in the Plague-time 1625, stayd but to make himselfe a suite of Cloathes, and while it was makeing, fell sick of the Plague and dyed.’

  The authorship of The Woman Hater, which has reached a wider audience through the settings of ‘Come sleepe, and with thy sweet deceiving,/Lock me in delight a while’ by Warlock and Gurney, remains disputed. Fletcher’s name was written on Garrick’s copy of the anonymous first edition (1607), but was later scratched out and replaced by Beaumont’s. Neither ascription provides for more than a single writer. The 1648 edition states that the play was ‘written by John Fletcher, Gent.’, while an edition from 1649, which announces the title as The Woman Hater, or The Hungry Courtier, attributes it to Beaumont and Fletcher jointly. Recent critics are equally divided.

  JOHN WILSON

  Take, oh take those lips away (1652)1

  Take, oh take those lips away,

  that so sweetly were forsworne,

  And those eyes: the breake of day

  lights that doe mislead the Morne;

  But my kisses bring againe, bring againe,

  Seales of loue, but seal’d in vaine, seal’d in vaine.

  Hide, oh hide those hills of Snow,

  which thy frozen blossome bears,

  On whose tops the Pinks that grow

  are of those that April wears,

  But first set my poor heart free,

  Bound in those icy chains by thee.

  (Bantock, Brian, Britten, Bush, Castelnuovo-Tedesco, Chausson, Cowen, van Dieren, Dring, Fortner, Gurney, Jeffreys, Killmayer, Maconchy, Parry, Plumstead, Reichardt, Rubbra, Somervell, Thompson, Vaughan Williams, Warlock)

  PETER WARLOCK: from Peterisms Set I (1923)

  Song

  [A sad song]1

  Lay a garland on my hearse

  Of the dismal yew,

  Maidens willow branches beare,

  Say I died true,

  My love was false, but I was firme,

  From my houre of birth.

  Upon my buried body lay

  Lightly gently earth.

  PETER WARLOCK

  Song

  [Sleep] (1922/1924)1

  Come sleepe, and with thy sweet deceiving,

  Lock me in delight a while,

  Let some pleasing Dreames beguile

  All my fancies, that from thence

  I may feele an influence,

  All my powers of care bereaving.

  Though but a shaddow, but a sliding,

  Let me know some little Joy!

  We that suffer long anoy

  Are contented with a thought

  Through an idle fancie wrought:

  O let my joyes, have some abiding.

  (Gurney)

  RALPH VAUGHAN WILLIAMS: from Three Songs from Shakespeare (1926)

  Orpheus with his lute

  [from King Henry the Eighth, Act III, sc. i1]

  Orpheus with his Lute made Trees,

  And the Mountaine tops that freeze,

  Bow themselues when he did sing.

  To his Musicke, Plants and Flowers

  Euer sprung; as Sunne and Showers,

  There had made a lasting Spring.

  Euery thing that heard him play,

  Euen the Billowes of the Sea,

  Hung their heads, & then lay by2:

  In sweet Musicke is such Art,

  Killing care,3 & griefe of heart,

  Fall asleepe, or hearing dye.

  (Davies, Foulds, German, Gurney, Hart, Quilter, Rubbra, Somervell)

  ROBERT HERRICK

  (1591–1674)

  I sing of Brooks, of Blossomes, Birds, and Bowers:

  Of April, May, of June, and July-Flowers.

  I sing of May-poles, Hock-carts, Wassails, Wakes,

  Of Bride-grooms, Brides, and of their Bridall-cakes.

  I write of Youth, of Love, and have Accesse

  By these, to sing of cleanly Wantonnesse.

  […]

  I write of Hell; I sing (and ever shall)

  Of Heaven, and hope to have it after all.

  ROBERT HERRICK: ‘The Argument of His Book’, Hesperides (1648)

  Herrick, unlike Suckling and Lovelace, did not belong to the landed gentry, but his family was wealthy; and although his father, a prosperous goldsmith, committed suicide by hurling himself to his death from a fourth-floor window a mere sixteen months after Robert’s birth, the Queen’s Almoner was ‘moved with charity’, and did not, as was usual with suicides, confiscate the Herrick estate for the Crown. In 1607 he was apprenticed to his wealthy uncle Sir William Herrick, a goldsmith like Herrick’s father. It is not known where Robert attended school, but he was already writing poetry by the age of nineteen and in 1613 entered St John’s College, Cambridge, where, as a fellow commoner (an honour reserved for the sons of wealthy families), he lived a lavish existence. He later moved to Trinity Hall and graduated in 1617. Herrick was ordained a priest in 1623, and as army chaplain accompanied the Duke of Buckingham on his disastrous expedition to the Isle of Rhé to help the Protestants of La Rochelle. As a reward for his efforts he received the Devonshire living of Dean Prior, where he took up residence in September 1630. He languished in what he called ‘dull Devonshire’, but drew consolation from his books, his pet animals (he apparently taught a pig to drink from a tankard), the devotion of his housekeeper, Prudence, and the writing of poetry. He confessed in ‘Discontents in Devon’ that he always wrote better in places he ‘loath’d so much’.

  Having left Dean Prior without his bishop’s permission, he spent some time in London living with Tomasin Parsons, more than a quarter of a century his junior. Parliament ejected him from his living in 1647, after which he returned to Lond
on. Hesperides was published in 1648, and in 1660 he was reinstated at Dean Prior, where he remained till his death fourteen years later. ‘Hesperides’ derives from Greek mythology, and originally referred to the nymphs, daughters of Hesperus, who guarded the garden where the golden apples grew in the Isles of the Blest, at the western extremity of the earth; hence it means the garden watched over by the nymphs. Herrick’s Hesperides contains some 1,400 poems, mostly short, and includes elegies, hymns and songs that have attracted an astonishing array of composers, including Bax, Berkeley, Brian, Bridge, Burrows, Coleridge-Taylor, Davies, Delius, Foulds, Gurney, Hart, Holbrooke, Howells, Parry, Quilter, Rawsthorne, Stanford, Vaughan Williams and Warlock. By far the most prolific composer of Herrick’s poems is Fritz Hart (1874–1949) with more than 120 settings. The 1,130 secular poems of Hesperides heavily outweigh the 272 divine ‘noble numbers’. The poems are characterized by a wonderful cantabile elegance and focus on the themes of love, transience and death, although his love poems, instead of dealing with real people and emotions, concentrate rather on exterior elegance. Less successful is that part of Hesperides devoted to religious poems: Noble Numbers. He was very much a ‘muse poet’, as Robert Graves would have called him, and some of his finest poems are addressed to his many ‘mistresses’: Anthea, Perilla, Electra, Blanch, Judith, Silvia and, of course, Julia. The well-known portrait of Herrick by Schiavonetti – luxuriant curly hair, a huge bulbous nose, fleshy hedonistic cheeks and a neatly mustachioed upper lip – suggests a man of the world rather than a priest. Despite the grace of much of his verse, Herrick was also capable of writing swingeing epigrams about his contemporaries, which were inexplicably omitted from the Oxford University Press edition of his works.