Boyhood's end (Hudson, set by M. Tippett) (The Lied and Art Song Texts Page: Texts and Translations to Lieder, mélodies, canzoni, and other classical vocal music)


What, then, did I want? What did I ask to have? If the question had been put
to me then, and if I had been capable of expressing what was in me, I should
have replied: I want only to keep what I have. To rise each morning and look
out on the sky and the grassy dew-wet Earth,  from day to day,  from year to
year.  To watch each  June and  July for spring,  to feel the same old sweet 
surprise  and  delight  at  th' appearance  of  each familiar flower,  ev'ry 
new-born insect, ev'ry bird returned once more from the north.  To listen in 
a trance of delight to the wild notes of the golden  plover coming once more
to the great plain, flying south, flock succeeding flock the whole day long.
Oh,  those wild beautiful cries of the golden  plover!  I could exclaim with
Hafiz with but one word changed: If after a thousand years that sound should
float o'er my tomb,  my bones uprising in their gladness  would dance in the
sepulchre.  To climb trees and put my hand down in the deep hot  nest of the
Bienteveo and feel the hot eggs,  the five long-pointed cream coloured eggs,
with choc'late  spots and  splashes  at the  larger end.  To lie on a grassy
bank,  with the blue water between me and beds of tall bulrushes,  list'ning
to  the  mysterious  sounds  of the  wind and of hidden  rails and coots and
courlands conversing  together in strange human-like tones;  to let my sight
dwell  and feast on the  camaloté  flower amid its floating  masses of moist
vivid green leaves,  the large almanda-like flower of a purest divine yellow
that,  when plucked,  leaves you with nothing but a green stem in your hand.
To ride at  noon on the hottest days when the whole  Earth is a-glitter with
illusory water and see the cattle and horses in thousands cov'ring the plain
at their watering places,  to visit some haunt of large birds at that still,
hot hour and see storks, ibises, grey herons, egrets of a dazzling whiteness
and rose-coloured  spoon-bills and flamingoes  standing in the shallow water
in  which  their  motionless forms are reflected.  To lie on  my back on the 
rust-brown  grass in  January,  to gaze up at the wide  hot  whity-blue sky,
peopled with millions  and myriads of glist'ning balls of thistledown,  ever
floating by. To gaze and gaze, until they are to me living things, and I, in
an ecstasy am with them, floating in that immense shining void!

Authorship

William Henry Hudson (1841-1922)

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

Michael Tippett (1905-1998)

Added to the website between May 1995 and September 2003.

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