ParisJune2004
The lads in their hundreds
A. E. Housman (1859–1936) published A Shropshire Lad in 1896. The place of which he writes is as much imaginary as real—an idealized version of the English countryside. This nostalgic spirit, together with the frequent musings upon the transitory nature of human life, made the poems extremely popular around the time of the First World War. Their clear rhythms and their simple directness have proved appealing to many composers. Arthur Somervell’s setting was the first, published in 1904. His choice of poems (and indeed verses) weaves a coherent narrative from the rather assorted original, and the gentle and economical settings match the restrained lyricism of Housman’s verse.
Ta rose de pourpre, à ton clair soleil,
O Juin, étincelle enivrée ;
Penche aussi vers moi ta coupe dorée :
Mon coeur à ta rose est pareil.
Sous le mol abri de la feuille ombreuse
Monte un soupir de volupté ;
Plus d’un ramier chante au bois écarté,
O mon coeur, sa plainte amoureuse.
Que ta perle est douce au ciel parfumé,
Etoile de la nuit pensive !
Mais combien plus douce est la clarté vive
Qui rayonne en mon coeur charmé !
La chantante mer, le long du rivage,
Taira son murmure éternel,
Avant qu’en mon coeur, chère amour, ô Nell,
Ne fleurisse plus ton image !
Le long du quais les grands vaisseaux,
Que la houle incline en silence,
Ne prennent pas garde aux berceaux
Que la main des femmes balance.
Mais viendra le jour des adieux ;
Car il faut que les femmes pleurent
Et que les hommes curieux
Tentent les horizons qui leurrent.
Et ce jour-là les grands vaisseaux,
Fuyant le port qui diminue,
Sentent leur masse retenue
Par l’âme des lointains berceaux.
Les donneurs de sérénades
Et les belles écouteuses
Échangent des propos fades
Sous les ramures chanteuses.
C’est Tircis et c’est Aminte,
Et c’est l’éternel Clitandre,
Et c’est Damis qui pour mainte
Cruelle fait maint vers tendre.
Leurs courtes vestes de soie,
Leurs longues robes à queues,
Leur élégance, leur joie
Et leurs molles ombres bleues
Tourbillonnent dans l’extase
D’une lune rose et grise,
Et la mandoline jase
Parmi les frissons de brise.
Dans un sommeil que charmait ton image
Je rêvais le bonheur, ardent mirage,
Tes yeux étaient plus doux, ta voix pure et sonore,
Tu rayonnais comme un ciel éclairé par l’aurore;
Tu m’appelais et je quittais la terre
Pour m’enfuir avec toi vers la lumière,
Les cieux pour nous entr’ouvraient leurs nues,
Splendeurs inconnues, lueurs divines entrevues,
Hélas! Hélas! triste réveil des songes
Je t’appelle, ô nuit, rends moi tes mensonges,
Reviens, reviens radieuse,
Reviens ô nuit mystérieuse!
Emporte ma folie
Au gré du vent,
Fleur en chantant cueillie
Et jetée en rêvant,
– Emporte ma folie
Au gré du vent:
Comme la fleur fauchée
Périt l’amour:
La main qui t’a touchée
Fuit ma main sans retour.
– Comme la fleur fauchée
Périt l’amour.
Que le vent qui te sèche
O pauvre fleur,
Tout à l’heure si fraîche
Et demain sans couleur,
– Que le vent qui te sèche,
Sèche mon coeur!
Votre âme est un paysage choisi
Que vont charmant masques et bergamasques
Jouant du luth et dansant et quasi
Tristes sous leurs déguisements fantasques
Tout en chantant sur le mode mineur
L’amour vainqueur et la vie opportune,
Ils n’ont pas l’air de croire à leur bonheur
Et leur chanson se mêle au clair de lune,
Au calme clair de lune triste et beau,
Qui fait rêver les oiseaux dans les arbres
Et sangloter d’extase les jets d’eau,
Les grands jets d’eau sveltes parmi les marbres
Si tu veux savoir ma belle,
Où s’envole à tire d’aile,
L’oiseau qui chantait sur l’ormeau?
Je te le dirai, ma belle,
Il vole vers qui l’appelle,
Vers celui-là
Qui l’aimera!
Si tu veux savoir ma blonde,
Pourquoi sur terre et sur l’onde
La nuit tout s’anime et s’unit?
Je te le dirai ma blonde,
C’est qu’il est une heure au monde
Où loin du jour
Veille l’amour!
Si tu veux savoir Sylvie,
Pourquoi j’aime à la folie
Tes yeux brillants et langoureux?
Je te le dirai Sylvie.
C’est que sans toi dans la vie
Tout pour mon cœur
N’est que douleur.
Who is Silvia? what is she,
That all our swains commend her?
Holy, fair, and wise is she;
The heaven such grace did lend her,
That she might admirèd be.
Is she kind as she is fair?
For beauty lives with kindness.
Love doth to her eyes repair,
To help him of his blindness,
And, being helped, inhabits there.
Then to Silvia let us sing,
That Silvia is excelling;
She excels each mortal thing
Upon the dull earth dwelling:
To her let us garlands bring.
O mistress mine, where are you roaming?
O stay and hear, your true love’s coming
That can sing both high and low.
Trip no further, pretty sweeting;
Journeys end in lovers’ meeting,
Ev’ry wise man’s son doth know.
What is love? ’Tis not hereafter;
Present mirth hath present laughter;
What’s to come is still unsure:
In delay there lies no plenty;
Then come kiss me, sweet and twenty;
Youth’s a stuff will not endure.
Loveliest of trees, the cherry now
Is hung with bloom along the bough,
And stands about the woodland ride
Wearing white for Eastertide.
Now, of my threescore years and ten,
Twenty will not come again,
And take from seventy springs a score,
It only leaves me fifty more.
And since to look at things in bloom
Fifty springs are little room,
About the woodlands I will go
To see the cherry hung with snow.
When I was one-and-twenty
I heard a wise man say,
‘Give crowns and pounds and guineas
But not your heart away;
Give pearls away and rubies
But keep your fancy free.’
But I was one-and-twenty,
No use to talk to me.
When I was one-and-twenty
I heard him say again,
‘The heart out of the bosom
Was never given in vain;
’Tis paid with sighs a plenty
And sold for endless rue.’
And I am two-and-twenty,
And oh, ’tis true, ’tis true.
There pass the careless people
That call their souls their own:
Here by the road I loiter,
How idle and alone.
His folly has not fellow
Beneath the blue of day
That gives to man or woman
His heart and soul away.
In summertime on Bredon
The bells they sound so clear;
Round both the shires they ring them
In steeples far and near,
A happy noise to hear.
Here of a Sunday morning
My love and I would lie,
And see the coloured counties,
And hear the larks so high
About us in the sky.
The bells would ring to call her
In valleys miles away:
‘Come all to church, good people;
Good people, come and pray.’
But here my love would stay.
And I would turn and answer
Among the springing thyme,
‘Oh, peal upon our wedding,
And we will hear the chime,
And come to church in time.’
But when the snows at Christmas
On Bredon top were strown,
My love rose up so early
And stole out unbeknown
And went to church alone.
They tolled the one bell only,
Groom there was none to see,
The mourners followed after,
And so to church went she,
And would not wait for me.
The bells they sound on Bredon,
And still the steeples hum.
‘Come all to church, good people,’—
Oh, noisy bells, be dumb;
I hear you, I will come.
The street sounds to the soldiers’ tread,
And out we come to see:
A single redcoat turns his head,
He turns and looks at me.
My man, from sky to sky’s so far,
We never crossed before;
Such leagues apart the world’s ends are,
We’re like to meet no more;
What thoughts at heart have you and I
We cannot stop to tell;
But dead or living, drunk or dry,
Soldier, I wish you well.
On the idle hill of summer,
Sleepy with the flow of streams,
Far I hear the steady drummer
Drumming like a noise in dreams.
Far and near and low and louder
On the roads of earth go by,
Dear to friends and food for powder,
Soldiers marching, all to die.
East and west on fields forgotten
Bleach the bones of comrades slain,
Lovely lads and dead and rotten;
None that go return again.
Far the calling bugles hollo,
High the screaming fife replies,
Gay the files of scarlet follow:
Woman bore me, I will rise.
White in the moon the long road lies,
The moon stands blank above;
White in the moon the long road lies
That leads me from my love.
Still hangs the hedge without a gust,
Still, still the shadows stay:
My feet upon the moonlit dust
Pursue the ceaseless way.
The world is round, so travellers tell,
And straight though reach the track,
Trudge on, trudge on, ’twill all be well,
The way will guide one back.
But ere the circle homeward hies
Far, far must it remove:
White in the moon the long road lies
That leads me from my love.
Think no more, lad; laugh, be jolly:
Why should men make haste to die?
Empty heads and tongues a-talking
Make the rough road easy walking,
And the feather pate of folly
Bears the falling sky.
Oh, ’tis jesting, dancing, drinking
Spins the heavy world around.
If young hearts were not so clever,
Oh, they would be young for ever:
Think no more; ’tis only thinking
Lays lads underground.
Into my heart an air that kills
From yon far country blows:
What are those blue remembered hills,
What spires, what farms are those?
That is the land of lost content,
I see it shining plain,
The happy highways where I went
And cannot come again.
The lads in their hundreds to Ludlow come in to the fair,
There’s men from the barn and the forge and the mill and the
fold,
The lads for the girls and the lads for the liquor are there,
And there with the rest are the lads that will never be old.
There’s chaps from the town and the field and the till and the cart,
And many to count are the stalwart, and many the brave,
And many the handsome of face and the handsome of heart,
And few that will carry their looks or their truth to the grave.
I wish one could know them, I wish there were tokens to tell
The fortunate fellows that now you can never discern;
And then one could talk to them friendly and wish them farewell
And watch them depart on the way that they will not return.
But now you may stare as you like but there’s nothing to scan;
And brushing your elbow unguessed at and not to be told
They carry back bright to the coiner the mintage of man,
The lads that will die in their glory and never be old.
This document was translated from LATEX by HEVEA.
(RIGHT SIDE)
James Martin was organ scholar at St John’s College, Cambridge from 1991 to 1994, and accompanied the choir for numerous broadcasts, concerts and tours. He completed a mathematics PhD in 1998, and has been in Paris on and off since then. He currently works as a researcher for the Centre Nationale de la Recherche Scientifique, based in University Paris 7. He is active as an organist and piano accompanist, recently working with the violinists Markus Linckelmann and Nicola Davis and the soprano Anna Ferguson.
Reuben Thomas began his singing career at the age of eight in the choir of St John’s College, Cambridge, where he returned to take a BA and PhD in computer science, and again sang with the choir. Currently a member of the cathedral choir, he regularly performs with the Monteverdi Choir, with whom he performed Berlioz’s Les Troyens at the Théâtre du Châtelet last October, and Monteverdi’s Vespers in Venice for the choir’s fortieth anniversary in March. He is currently translating a book on automata theory into English for publication by Cambridge University Press in the fall.
PROGRAMME
Gabriel Fauré (1845–1911)
(i)Nell (Leconte de Lisle)
(ii)Les berceaux (Sully Prudhomme)
(iii)Mandoline (Paul Verlaine)
(iv)Après un rêve (Romain Bussine)
(v)Fleur jetée (Armand Silvestre)
(vi)Clair de lune (Paul Verlaine)
(vii)Sylvie (Paul de Choudens)
Claude Debussy (1862–1918) from Préludes book I
(i)La fille aux cheveux de lin
(ii)Minstrels
Gerald Finzi (1901–1956) from Let us garlands bring
(i)Sylvia (William Shakespeare)
(ii)O mistress mine (William Shakespeare)
John Ireland (1879–1962)
(i)The Darkened Valley
Arthur Somervell (1863–1937) A Shropshire Lad (A. E. Housman)
(i)Loveliest of trees, the cherry now
(ii)When I was one-and-twenty
(iii)There pass the careless people
(iv)In summertime on Bredon
(v)The street sounds to the soldiers’ tread
(vi)On the idle hill of summer
(vii)White in the moon the long road lies
(viii)Think no more, lad; laugh, be jolly
(ix)Into my heart an air that kills
(x)The lads in their hundreds
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