Tears, from Five Elizabethan Songs
Anonymous

Weep you no more, sad fountains;
What need you flow so fast?
Look how the snowy mountains
Heaven’s sun doth quickly waste!
But my Sun’s heavenly eyes
View not your weeping,
That now lies sleeping
Softly, now softly lies
Sleeping.

Sleep is a reconciling,
A rest that peace begets;
Doth not the sun rise smiling
When fair at even he sets?
Rest you then, rest, sad eyes!
Melt not in weeping,
While she lies sleeping
Softly, now softly lies
Sleeping.

Come, Sleep, and with thy sweet deceiving
Lock me in delight awhile;
Let some pleasing dream beguile
All my fancies; that from thence
I may feel an influence
All my powers of care bereaving!

Though but a shadow, but a sliding,
Let me know some little joy!
We that suffer long annoy
Are contented with a thought
Through an idle fancy wrought:
O let my joys have some abiding
O let my joys have some abiding.
 
 
 
 

The Fields are Full
Edward Shanks

The fields are full of summer still
  And breathe again upon the air,
From brown dry side of hedge and hill,
  More sweetness than the sense can bear.
 
 
 
 

So some old couple who in youth
   With love were filled and over full
And loved with strength and loved with truth
  In heavy age are beautiful.
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

I love the cradle songs the mothers sing
In lonely places when the twilight drops,
The slow endearing melodies that bring
Sleep to the weeping lids; and, when she stops,
I love the roadside birds upon the tops
Of dusty hedges in a world of Spring.

And when the sunny rain drips from the edge
Of midday wind, and meadows lean one way,
And a long whisper passes thro' the sedge,
Beside the broken water let me stay,
While these old airs upon my memory play,
And silent changes colour up the hedge.
 
 
 
 
 

 

All Night Under the Moon
Wilfrid Gibson

  All night under the moon
  Plovers are flying
Over the dreaming meadows
   of silvery light,
  Over the meadows of June
  Calling and crying
Wandering voices of love
  in the hush of the night.

  All night under the moon
  Love, though we're lying
Quietly under the thatch,
    in the dreaming light
  Over the meadows of June
  Together we're flying
Wandering voices of love
  in the hush of the night.
 
 
 

In the gloom of whiteness
In the great silence of snow,
A child was sighing and bitterly saying; "Oh,
They have killed a white bird 
  up there on her nest,
The down is fluttering from her breast!"

And still it fell through that dusky brightness
On the child crying for the bird of the snow.
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

 
 

Song of Silence
Ivor Gurney

 O my darling how shall I give you
  thanks enough for any song
 Beauty God has showed me
  Time the strong shall not destroy
   All annoy
 All evil things may grieve you
  pass away to comfort leave you.

 Were the throats of all the singing birds
  of April mine to say
 All the thoughts of wonder
  crowding my adoring heart today
   even they
 Flying to you and bringing
  Love of mine would rest silently clinging.
 
 
 

 The scent of earth breathes
  from the wood near dark
 May we not bring, ere Spring, the life
  that lies in each dim music spark?
 Hear the horn call far on hill
  Now darkling show the wood edges;
 the tales of age on age are breath
  in the cold air sweet in death.
 
 
 
 
 
 

 

 

 Song
 Ivor Gurney

 Only the wanderer
 Knows England’s graces,
 Or can anew see clear
 Familiar faces.

 And who loves Joy as he
 That dwells in shadows?
 Do not forget me quite,
 O Severn Meadows.

I’m homesick for my hills again—
My hills again!
To see above the Severn plain
Unscabbarded against the sky
The blue high blade of Cotswold lie;
The giant clouds go royally
By jagged Malvern with a train
Of shadows.  Where the land is low
Like a huge imprisoning O
I hear a heart that’s sound and high
I hear the heart within me cry:
“I’m homesick for my hills again—
My hills again!
Cotswold or Malvern, sun or rain!
My hills again!”