Gerald Finzi: To a poet (The Lied and Art Song Texts Page: Texts and Translations to Lieder, mélodies, canzoni, and other classical vocal music)


I who am dead a thousand years,
And wrote this sweet archaic song,
Send you my words for messengers
The way I shall not pass along.

I care not if you bridge the seas,
Or ride secure the cruel sky,
Or build consummate palaces
Of metal or of masonry.

But have you wine and music still,
And statues and bright-eyed love,
And foolish thoughts of good and ill,
And prayers to them who sit above?

How shall we conquer? Like a wind
That falls at eve our fancies blow,
And old Maeonides the blind
said it three thousand years ago.

O friend unseen, unborn, unknown,
Student of our sweet English tongue,
Read out my words at night, alone:
I was a poet, I was young.

Since I can never see your face,
And never shake you by the hand,
I send my soul through time and space
To greet you. You will understand.

2. On parent knees

Language: English

Authorship

Sir William Jones (1746-1794)

Based on

text

Anonymous/Unidentified Artist


On parent knees, a naked new-born child,
Weeping thou sat'st, while all around thee smil'd:
So live, that sinking to thy life's last sleep,
Calm thou may'st smile, while all around thee weep.

3. Intrada

Language: English

Authorship

Thomas Traherne (1637?-1674)

Centuries of Meditation


 An empty book is like an Infant's Soul, in which
 anything may be written; it is capable of all things
 but containeth nothing. I have a mind to fill this
 with profitable wonders, and with those things which shall
 shew my Love. Things strange yet common, most high,
 yet plain: infinitely profitable, but not esteemed;
 Truths you love, but know not.

4. The birthnight

Language: English

Authorship

Walter de la Mare (1873-1956)

Poems


Dearest, it was a night
That in its darkness racked Orion's stars;
A sighing wind ran faintly white
Along the willows, and the cedar boughs
Laid their wide hands in stealthy peace across
The starry silence of their antique moss:
No sound save rushing air
Cold, yet all sweet with Spring,
And in thy mother's arms, couched weeping there,
Thou, lovely thing.

5. June on Castle Hill

Language: English

Authorship

Frank Lawrence Lucas (1894-1967)


On its grassy brow
 [ ... ]

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6. Ode on the rejection of St. Cecilia

Language: English

Authorship

George Granville Barker (1913-1991)

News of the World


Rise, underground sleepers, rise from the grave
 [ ... ]

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