The last gallop (Sitwell, set by W. Walton) (The Lied and Art Song Texts Page: Texts and Translations to Lieder, mélodies, canzoni, and other classical vocal music)


Gone the saturnalia sighing, dying,
Shone the leaves' regalia, maddened
with the flying
Hooves, the glittering leaves seem
Faces in a dim dream,
Satyrine the leaves gleam
At the dreams of dying.
Pierrot's mask is whitened,
Long-nosed frightened;
Rags tragi-comical,
Flags plano-conical,
Tags histrionical,
All histrionical,
Form acronomical
Falls - lies sprawling.
Cannibal, the sun, blared down
upon the shrunken
Heads, the drums of skin, the sin -
The dead men drunken,
Through the canvas slum come
Bunches of taut nerves, dance,
Caper through the slum, prance
Like paper blowing.
Lying in the deep mud under
tumbrils rolling,
The dead men drunken, tossed and
lost, and sprawling
The trumpets calling
From Hell's pits falling
The crowd seas tumble
And Death's drums rumble.
White as a winding sheet,
Masks blowing down the street:
Moscow, Paris  London, Vienna-
all are undone.
The drums of death are mumbling,
rumbling, and tumbling ,
Mumbling, rumbling, and tumbling,
The world's floors are quaking,
crumbling and breaking.

Input by Dan Eggleston

Authorship

Edith Sitwell (1887-1964)

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

William Walton (1902-1983)

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Added to the website between May 1995 and September 2003.

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