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


 Sailors come
 To the drum
 Out of Babylon;
 Hobby-horses
 Foam, the dumb
 Sky rhinoceros-glum

 Watched the courses of the
 breakers' rocking-horses and with
 Glaucis,
 Lady Venus on the settee of the
 horsehair sea!
 Where Lord Tennyson in laurels
 wrote a gloria free,
 In a borealic iceberg came Victoria; she
 Knew Prince Albert's tall memorial
 took the colours of the floreal
 And the borealic iceberg; floating
 on they see
 New-arisen Madam Venus for
 whose sake from far
 Came the fat zebra'd emperor
 from Zanzibar
 Where like golden bouquets lay far
 Asia, Africa, Cathay,
 All laid before that shady lady by
 the fibroid Shah.
 Captain Fracasse stout as any water -
 butt came, stood
 With Sir Bacchus both a-drinking
 the black tarr'd grapes' blood
 Plucked among the tartan leafage
 By the furry wind whose grief age
 Could not wither -
 like a squirrel with a gold star-nut.
 Queen Victoria sitting shocked
 upon a rocking horse
 Of a wave said to the Laureate,
 "This minx of course
 Is as sharp as a lynx and blacker -
 deeper than the drinks and
 quite as
 Hot as any Hottentot, without
 remorse!
 For the minx,"
 Said she,
 "And the drinks,
 You can see
 Are hot as any hottentot and not
 the goods for me!"

Input by Dan Eggleston

Authorship

Edith Sitwell (1887-1964)

Facades

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)

Façade

Added to the website between May 1995 and September 2003.

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