King David (Mare, set by H. Howells, C. Gibbs, M. Hurd, C. Proctor, F. Swain) (The Lied and Art Song Texts Page: Texts and Translations to Lieder, mélodies, canzoni, and other classical vocal music)


King David was a sorrowful man:
No cause for his sorrow had he;
And he called for the music of a hundred harps,
To ease his melancholy.

They played till they all fell silent:
Played and play sweet did they;
But the sorrow that haunted the heart of King David
They could not charm away.

He rose; and in his garden
Walked by the moon alone,
A nightingale hidden in a cypress tree,
Jargoned on and on.

King David lifted his sad eyes
Into the dark-boughed tree
"Tell me, thou little bird that singest,
Who taught my grief to thee?"

But the bird in no-wise heeded;
And the king in the cool of the moon
Hearkened to the nightingale's sorrowfulness,
Till all his own was gone.

Input by Virginia Knight

Authorship

Walter de la Mare (1873-1956)

Peacock Pie: A Book of Rhymes

Musical settings (art songs, Lieder, mélodies, (etc.), choral pieces, and other vocal works set to this text), listed by composer (not necessarily exhaustive)

Cecil Armstrong Gibbs (1889-1960)

In a Dream's Beguiling

Herbert Norman Howells (1892-1983)

Michael Hurd (1928-)

Sea and Shore Songs

Charles Proctor (1906-)

Four Various Songs

Freda Swain (1902-)

From "Peacock Pie"

Added to the website between May 1995 and September 2003.

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