The Penguin Book of English Song Page 2

  From Chapter XXII (‘Boyhood’s End’) of Far Away and Long Ago.

  ROBERT BRIDGES (1844–1930)

  Thou didst delight my eyes ∙ Noel: Christmas Eve, 1913 ∙ ‘Since we loved’ ∙ Nightingales

  GERARD MANLEY HOPKINS (1844–89)

  God’s grandeur ∙ Heaven-Haven ∙ Spring and fall ∙ Spring ∙ Hurrahing in harvest

  W(ILLIAM) E(RNEST) HENLEY (1849–1903)

  Echoes XLV. To W.B. ∙ Echoes XVIII. To A.D. ∙ Echoes XXV ∙ To K. de M. ∙ Echoes VII ∙ Echoes XXXVIII

  ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON (1850–94)

  Keepsake Mill ∙ *The swing ∙ The vagabond ∙ ‘Let Beauty awake in the morn from beautiful dreams’ ∙ ‘I will make you brooches and toys for your delight’ ∙ Youth and love ∙ The unforgotten ∙ ‘The infinite shining heavens’ ∙ To the tune of Wandering Willie ∙ ‘Bright is the ring of words’ ∙ ‘I have trod the upward and the downward slope’ ∙ My bed is a boat ∙ The wind ∙ Pirate story ∙ Bed in summer ∙ Where go the boats? ∙ My shadow ∙ Windy nights ∙ My ship and I ∙ Escape at bedtime ∙ A good boy

  OSCAR WILDE (1854–1900)

  Symphony in yellow ∙ Requiescat

  A(LFRED) E(DWARD) HOUSMAN (1859–1936)

  *‘Loveliest of trees, the cherry now’ ∙ *‘When I was one-and-twenty’ ∙ ‘There pass the careless people’ ∙ *Bredon Hill ∙ *‘The street sounds to the soldiers’ tread’ ∙ *‘On the idle hill of summer’ ∙ ‘White in the moon the long road lies’ ∙ *‘Think no more, lad; laugh, be jolly’ ∙ *‘Into my heart an air that kills’ ∙ *‘The lads in their hundreds to Ludlow come in for the fair’ ∙ ‘On Wenlock Edge the wood’s in trouble’ ∙ ‘From far, from eve and morning’ ∙ *‘Is my team ploughing’ ∙ ‘Oh, when I was in love with you’ ∙ ‘Clunton and Clunbury’ ∙ ‘We’ll to the woods no more’ ∙ *‘Along the field as we came by’ ∙ *‘The half-moon westers low, my love’ ∙ ‘In the morning, in the morning’ ∙ ‘The sigh that heaves the grasses’ ∙ ‘Oh see how thick the goldcup flowers’ ∙ Fancy’s knell ∙ *‘With rue my heart is laden’ ∙ *‘Look not in my eyes, for fear’ ∙ ‘Oh fair enough are sky and plain’ ∙ ‘When the lad for longing sighs’ ∙ *The Lent lily ∙ ‘Twice a week the winter thorough’ ∙ ‘If truth in hearts that perish’ ∙ ‘You smile upon your friend to-day’ ∙ ‘When smoke stood up from Ludlow’ ∙ ‘Far in a western brookland’ ∙ ‘’Tis time, I think, by Wenlock town’ ∙ Reveille ∙ March ∙ ‘Farewell to barn and stack and tree’ ∙ ‘He would not stay for me; and who can wonder?’ ∙ ‘Because I liked you better’

  MARY COLERIDGE (1861–1907)

  L’oiseau bleu ∙ Hush ∙ In spring ∙ Song (‘Thy hand in mine’) ∙ Chillingham, I ∙ Chillingham, II

  A(RTHUR) C(HRISTOPHER) BENSON (1862–1925)

  Coronation ode ∙ The song (‘Speak, speak, music’) ∙ In the dawn

  SIR HENRY NEWBOLT (1862–1938)

  Drake’s drum ∙ The Old Superb ∙ Gavotte

  RUDYARD KIPLING (1865–1936)

  ‘When the cabin port-holes are dark and green’ ∙ ‘The Camel’s hump is an ugly lump’ ∙ ‘I keep six honest serving-men’ ∙ ‘I am the Most Wise Baviaan’ ∙ ‘I’ve never sailed the Amazon’ ∙ Danny Deever ∙ ‘The People of the Eastern Ice’

  W(ILLIAM) B(UTLER) YEATS (1865–1939)

  He thinks of those who have spoken evil of his beloved ∙ He wishes for the Cloths of Heaven ∙ The folly of being comforted ∙ The lake isle of Innisfree ∙ When you are old ∙ He reproves the curlew ∙ The lover mourns for the loss of love ∙ The withering of the boughs ∙ He hears the cry of the sedge ∙ Down by the salley gardens ∙ Byzantium ∙ Long-legged fly

  ERNEST DOWSON (1867–1900)

  Non sum qualis eram bonae sub regno Cynarae ∙ Moritura ∙ Cease smiling, Dear ∙ Autumnal ∙ O mors! Quam amara est memoria tua homini pacem habenti in substantiis suis ∙ Exile ∙ *In Spring ∙ Spleen ∙ *Vitae summa brevis spem nos vetat incohare longam ∙ A coronal ∙ Beata solitudo ∙ Seraphita

  HILAIRE BELLOC (1870–1953)

  Matilda ∙ Henry King ∙ The early morning ∙ Ha’nacker Mill ∙ The night ∙ My own country ∙ The birds ∙ Tarantella

  W(ILLIAM) H(ENRY) DAVIES (1871–1940)

  Thunderstorms ∙ This night ∙ Leisure ∙ A great time ∙ Money ∙ Love’s caution ∙ Night wanderers ∙ Beggar’s song

  WALTER DE LA MARE (1873–1956)

  Arabia ∙ Tired Tim ∙ Alas, alack! ∙ Mrs. MacQueen ∙ The dunce ∙ Full moon ∙ Miss T. ∙ King David ∙ *Lovelocks ∙ The old house ∙ Some one ∙ Five eyes ∙ The song of shadows ∙ The bells ∙ *Silver ∙ Araby ∙ Now silent falls ∙ Now all the roads ∙ The flower ∙ An epitaph ∙ The hare ∙ The buckle ∙ A song of Enchantment ∙ Autumn ∙ Vigil ∙ Tit for tat ∙ ‘Here lyeth our infant, Alice Rodd’ ∙ ‘Here sleep I’ ∙ ‘Three sisters rest beneath’ ∙ ‘Here lies Thomas Logge’ ∙ ‘Just a span and half a span’ ∙ ‘No Voice to scold’ ∙ ‘Stranger, here lies’ ∙ ‘Be very quiet now’

  G(ILBERT) K(EITH) CHESTERTON (1874–1936)

  The donkey

  WILFRID WILSON GIBSON (1878–1962)

  Northumberland ∙ Merry Eye ∙ Black Stitchel ∙ Stow-on-the-Wold ∙ Otterburn

  JOHN MASEFIELD (1878–1967)

  Sea-fever ∙ St Mary’s bells ∙ Vagabond ∙ The Chief Centurions ∙ Lollingdon Downs XX (‘Up on the downs the red-eyed kestrels hover’) ∙ On Eastnor Knoll ∙ Trade Winds ∙ Tewkesbury Road ∙ An old song re-sung ∙ Sorrow o’ Mydath ∙ Captain Stratton’s Fancy ∙ London Town ∙ The seal man

  EDWARD THOMAS (1878–1917)

  The penny whistle ∙ Digging ∙ Bright clouds ∙ Lights out ∙ Will you come? ∙ The trumpet ∙ Snow ∙ Out in the dark

  JAMES JOYCE (1882–1941)

  Chamber Music V (‘Lean out of the window’) ∙ Chamber Music I (‘Strings in the earth and air’) ∙ Chamber Music VIII (‘Who goes amid the green wood’) ∙ Chamber Music X (‘Bright cap and streamers’) ∙ Chamber Music XVI (‘O cool is the valley now’) ∙ Chamber Music XXXI (‘O, it was out by Donnycarney’) ∙ *Chamber Music XXXII (‘Rain has fallen all the day’) ∙ Chamber Music XXXIII (‘Now, O now, in this brown land’) ∙ Tilly ∙ Watching the needleboats at San Sabba ∙ A flower given to my daughter ∙ She weeps over Rahoon ∙ Tutto è sciolto ∙ On the beach at Fontana ∙ Simples ∙ Flood ∙ Nightpiece ∙ Alone ∙ A memory of the players in a mirror at midnight ∙ Bahnhofstrasse ∙ A prayer ∙ Chamber Music XXXIV (‘Sleep now, O sleep now’) ∙ Chamber Music XXXVI (‘I hear an army charging upon the land’) ∙ from Finnegans Wake (‘Nuvoletta in her lightdress’) ∙ from Ulysses (‘Solitary hotel in mountain pass’)

  JAMES ELROY FLECKER (1884–1915)

  To a poet a thousand years hence

  RUPERT BROOKE (1887–1915)

  The soldier ∙ Song (‘All suddenly the wind comes soft’) ∙ The Dead ∙ The Old Vicarage, Grantchester

  DAME EDITH SITWELL (1887–1964)

  Madam Mouse trots ∙ Aubade ∙ Sir Beelzebub ∙ By the lake ∙ Scotch rhapsody ∙ Popular song ∙ from Canto 18 of The Sleeping Beauty (‘When green as a river was the barley’) ∙ Canto 19 from The Sleeping Beauty (‘Through gilded trellises’) ∙ Old Sir Faulk ∙ Still falls the Rain

  IVOR GURNEY (1890–1937)

  Song (‘Only the wanderer’) ∙ Poem (‘Horror follows Horror within me’) ∙ What evil coil

  FRANCIS LEDWIDGE (1891–1917)

  Desire in spring ∙ The ships of Arcady ∙ To one dead ∙ Song (‘Nothing but sweet music wakes’) ∙ Nocturne

  WILFRED OWEN (1893–1918)

  Spring offensive ∙ The kind ghosts ∙ Anthem for doomed youth ∙ But I was looking at the permanent stars ∙ The next war ∙ Sonnet. On seeing a piece of our heavy artillery brought into action ∙ Futility ∙ The parable of the old man and the young ∙ The end ∙ At a Calvary near the Ancre ∙ Strange meeting ∙ From my diary, July 1914

  WILLIAM SOUTAR (1898�
��1943)

  A riddle (‘There’s pairt o’ it young’) ∙ A laddie’s sang ∙ Nightmare ∙ Black day ∙ Bed-time ∙ Slaughter ∙ A riddle (‘It was your faither and mither’) ∙ The larky lad ∙ Who are these children? ∙ Supper ∙ The children ∙ The auld aik ∙ Ballad (‘O! shairly ye hae seen my love’)

  W(YSTAN) H(UGH) AUDEN (1907–73)

  O lurcher-loving collier ∙ Night Mail ∙ Prologue (‘They are our past and our future’) ∙ Our hunting fathers ∙ Song (‘Underneath the abject willow’) ∙ ‘Let the florid music praise’ ∙ Autumn song ∙ On this island ∙ Nocturne from The Dog beneath the Skin (‘Now through night’s caressing grip’) ∙ His Excellency ∙ ‘To lie flat on the back with the knees flexed’ ∙ Song (‘Fish in the unruffled lakes’) ∙ Some say that love’s a little boy ∙ ‘Stop all the clocks, cut off the telephone’ ∙ ‘O the valley in the summer where I and my John’ ∙ ‘Driver drive faster and make a good run’ (Calypso) ∙ Anthem for St Cecilia’s day ∙ As I walked out one evening ∙ Refugee blues (‘Say this city has ten million souls’) ∙ Lauds ∙ ‘What’s in your mind, my dove, my coney’ ∙ ‘Eyes look into the well’ ∙ ‘Carry her over the water’ ∙ Elegy for J.F.K. ∙ In memoriam L. K.-A. ∙ Rimbaud ∙ Lullaby (‘Lay your sleeping head, my love’)

  DYLAN THOMAS (1914–53)

  Do not go gentle into that good night

  ALUN LEWIS (1915–44)

  Song (‘Oh journeyman, Oh journeyman’) ∙ Compassion ∙ The dancer

  SIDNEY KEYES (1922–43)

  Song: The heart’s assurance ∙ Remember your lovers

  Select Bibliography

  Acknowledgements

  Follow Penguin

  * An asterisk in the list above indicates that the poem appears more than once in the book.

  This book is dedicated to Ian Partridge, peerless in this repertoire, Audrey Hyland, Jonathan Freeman-Attwood, Mark Wildman and all at the Royal Academy of Music who promote the art of song.

  Introduction

  Poetry and music have been associated with each other from the very beginning. Short poems are still called lyrics, even though they are now not usually sung to a lyre; Virgil’s Aeneid begins: ‘Arma virumque cano’ – ‘I sing [not tell] of arms and man’; a sonnet, though rarely sung, derives its name from the word ‘song’; many poems from the Elizabethan age to the present have been called ‘Song’, with no musical setting; and music, for many of us, is an integral part of poetry. The Penguin Book of English Song contains a great variety of poems from the fourteenth to the twentieth century that have reached a wider audience through the magic of music. As John Dryden wrote in the dedication of Purcell’s The Vocal and Instrumental Musick of The Prophetess, or The History of Dioclesian (1690):

  Musick and Poetry have ever been acknowledg’d Sisters, which walking hand in hand, support each other; As Poetry is the harmony of Words, so Musick is that of Notes: and as Poetry is a Rise above Prose and Oratory, so is Musick the exaltation of Poetry. Both of them may excel apart, but sure are most excellent when they are join’d, because nothing is then wanting to either of their Perfections: for thus they appear like Wit and Beauty in the same Person.

  There are many books available in English that introduce the reader to the world of French, German, Italian and Spanish song, among them A French Song Companion (OUP), The Book of Lieder (Faber and Faber), Italian Art Song (Indiana University Press) and The Spanish Song Companion (Scarecrow Press). There is no equivalent book on English song, no book that provides an anthology of English verse with commentaries on poets, composers and, when textual explanations are needed, poems. Each of the 100 chapters of The Penguin Book of English Song, arranged chronologically from Chaucer to Auden, opens with information about the poet’s life, work and, often, approach to music. This is followed by a choice of poems that have inspired musical settings, arranged chronologically by composer. Piano-accompanied song predominates, but not exclusively. Benjamin Britten, for example, is represented not only by such works as Winter Words (Hardy) for voice and piano, but also his Spring Symphony (Spenser, Clare, Milton, Herrick); Nocturne (Shelley, Tennyson, Wordsworth, Owen, Keats, Shakespeare) for tenor, seven obbligato instruments and string orchestra; A Ceremony of Carols (Southwell) for trebles and harp; Serenade (Tennyson, Blake, Jonson, Keats) for tenor, horn and strings; Five Flower Songs (Herrick, Crabbe, Clare) for unaccompanied chorus; ‘Canticle III’ (Sitwell) for tenor, horn and piano; and Peter Grimes (Crabbe) – reminding us that Britten was one of the very few composers who were equally at home in opera and song.

  Many of these English poems have also inspired songs – in German translation – by the great Lieder composers, which explains the presence within these pages of Beethoven, Haydn, Loewe, Mendelssohn, Schubert, Schumann, Strauss, Wolf and so on. The bulk of the book comprises verse of undisputed literary pedigree – a rich anthology of English poetry (including Irish, Scots and Welsh writers) from Chaucer to Auden, with very few of the great poets omitted. American verse has been excluded for lack of space, though American composers such as Argento, Barber, Beach, Chanler, Hoiby, Rorem etc. feature regularly in the selected list of composers printed in parenthesis at the end of a poem.

  The volume, despite the presence of many composers of different nationalities, remains quintessentially English, and includes pieces that have a firm place in our national consciousness: ‘Rule, Britannia!’ (James Thomson), sung each year at the Last Night of the Proms; ‘Abide with me’ (Henry Francis Lyte), bawled each year at the Cup Final; ‘Twinkle, twinkle, little star’ (Jane Taylor), cooed by every child in its pram; ‘Tom Bowling’ (Charles Dibdin), caressed each year by the BBC Orchestra’s first cello at the Last Night of the Proms; ‘Auld lang syne’ (Robert Burns), intoned, not just by the Scots, each Hogmanay; ‘Jerusalem’ (William Blake), the official hymn of the England and Wales Cricket Board; and ‘Once in royal David’s city’ (Cecil Frances Alexander), whose first verse is sung by a lone treble each year at the Festival of Nine Lessons and Carols from King’s College, Cambridge. Patriotic poems include ‘For those at sea’ (William Whiting), known to every English-speaking sailor the world over; ‘Our God, our help in ages past’ (Isaac Watts), sung at Winston Churchill’s funeral and every Remembrance Day; and the National Anthem.

  W. H. Auden wrote in The Poet’s Tongue (1935) that ‘we do not want to read “great” poetry all the time, and a good anthology should contain poems for every mood’. He also pointed out (Introduction to 19th Century British Minor Poets, 1966), in an attempt to define ‘major’ and ‘minor’ poets, that it was not simply ‘a matter of the pleasure the poet gives an individual reader: I cannot enjoy one poem by Shelley and am delighted by every line of William Barnes, but I know perfectly well that Shelley is a major poet and Barnes a minor one.’ The Penguin Book of English Song includes many so-called minor poets: William Allingham, the friend of Tennyson, who wrote one indestructible poem; Thomas Lovell Beddoes, the haunted poet of ‘Dream-pedlary’; Colley Cibber, the poet of ‘The blind boy’, immortalized by Franz Schubert; George Crabbe, whose ‘Peter Grimes’ from The Borough is now celebrated the world over through the music of Benjamin Britten; tragic Ernest Dowson, one of Delius’s favourite poets; Francis Ledwidge, much admired by Seamus Heaney; Sidney Keyes, who died aged twenty in the Second World War; Alun Lewis, another war victim, for whom Robert Graves predicted a shining future; Walter de la Mare, who penned some of the most magical poems in the English language; and many more.

  The texts printed here are those of the original poems, even when composers have tweaked the text to suit their settings; and the title of each poem is the one used by the poet. Gurney’s ‘By a bierside’ is therefore titled ‘The Chief Centurions’, and the poem is printed as it originally appeared in Masefield’s Pompey the Great – Gurney, when setting the poem from memory in the trenches, misremembered fourteen words. Square brackets after the title of a poem denote the composer’s title, and square brackets within the poem indicate verses that
the composer has omitted.

  Francis Turner Palgrave, in his Introduction to a volume of poems by Robert Herrick (Macmillan and Co., 1877), writes perceptively that ‘the poet’s own spelling and punctuation bear, or may bear, a gleam of his personality’ – and it is for this reason that the poems in The Penguin Book of English Song are printed with their original orthography and punctuation. This also enables us to trace the development of the English language as the book progresses. Modernizing the spelling of Chaucer’s language affects both the sound, sight, rhythm and flavour of the poem. Compare Chaucer’s original opening of ‘The General Prologue’ to the Canterbury Tales with Geoffrey Dyson’s modern version of the same lines and the difference is at once apparent:

  Whan that Aprill with his shoures soote

  The droghte of March hath perced to the roote,

  And bathed every veine in swich licour

  Of which vertu engendered is the flour;

  Whan Zephirus eek with his sweete breeth

  Inspired hath in every holt and heeth

  The tendre croppes, and the yonge sonne

  Hath in the Ram his halve cours yronne,

  And smale foweles maken melodie,

  That slepen al the night with open ye

  (So priketh hem nature in hir corages);

  Thanne longen folk to goon on pilgrimages […]

  When that April with his showers sweet

  The drought of March hath piercèd to the root,

  And bathèd every vein in such moisture

  Of which virtue engendered is the flower;

  When Zephyr eke with his sweet breath

  Inspirèd hath in every holt and heath

  The tender branches, and the young sun

  Hath in Ram’s sign his half course run,

  And small birds make melody

  That sleep all night with open eye, –

  So worketh nature in their hearts, –

  Then folk do long to go on pilgrimage […]