Lavender Pond (Smith, set by M. Head) (The Lied and Art Song Texts Page: Texts and Translations to Lieder, mélodies, canzoni, and other classical vocal music)


Never a swallow wets his wing
In Lavender Pond from Spring to Spring;
Never a lily, pure and chill,
Holds her cup for the dews to fill;
Never a willow, gnarled and hoar,
Bends his bough to a reedy shore;
Never a fragrant flower spike blows there,
Never a lordly King-staff grows there,
Slender and straight where sedges shiver
And glistening Mayflies glance and quiver,
In Lavender Pond by London River.

But the Baltic barques the come and go
With their old pump-windmills turning slow,
And the tall Cape Horners rest and ride
Like stately swans on the murky tide,
And the ocean tramps all red and rusted,
Worn and weathered and salt-encrusted,
Gather and cluster near and far,
Derrick and funnel, mast and spar,
From many a port of old renown,
And lonely wharf where the booms float down,
To Lavender Pond by London Town. 

And keen and strong is the wind that comes
To the dingy streets of the Deptford slums,
Strong and keen with the scent it steals
Off piled-up acres of Kalmar deals,
And the gulls go flying, the gulls go crying,
And the wind's sob and the water's sighing
Croon to the ships an old sea ditty
In Lavender Pond by London City.
Never a swallow wets his wing
In Lavender Pond from Spring to Spring,
Never a lily, pure and chill,
Holds her cup for the dews to fill;
In Lavender Pond by London River.

Input by Brian Charles Witkowski

Authorship

Cicely Fox Smith (1882-1954)

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

Michael Head (1900-1976)

Six Sea Songs

Date added to the website: 2004-10-19.

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