Long steel grass (Noche Espagnola) (Sitwell, set by W. Walton) (The Lied and Art Song Texts Page: Texts and Translations to Lieder, mélodies, canzoni, and other classical vocal music)


Long steel grass -
The white soldiers pass -
The light is braying like an ass.
See
The tall Spanish jade
With hair black as night-shade
Worn as a cockade!
Flee
Her eyes' gasconade
And her gown's parade
(As stiff as a brigade!)
Tee-hee!
The hard and braying light
Is zebra'd black and white
It will take away the slight
And free,
Tinge of the mouth organ sound,
(Oyster-stall notes) oozing round
Her flounces as they sweep the ground.
The
Trumpet and the drum
And the martial cornet come
To make the people dumb -
But we
Won't wait for sly-foot night
(Moonlight, watered milk-white, bright)
To make clear the declaration
Of our Paphian vocation
Beside the castanetted sea,
Where stalks Il Capitaneo
Swaggart braggadocio
Sword and moustacio - He
Is green as a cassada
And his hair is an armada.
To the jade: "Come kiss me harder"
He called across the battlements as she
Heard our voices thin and shrill
As the steely grasses' thrill,
Or the sound of the onycha
When the phoca has the pica
In the palace of the Queen Chinee!

"Long Steel Grass is in fact called Trio for two cats and a Trombone. It is about a couple of cats, do you see, having a love affair." --Edith Sitwell, "Last Years of a Rebel", p. 182.

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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