Binsey Poplars (Charles West)
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- Editor: Charles West (submitted 2022-08-28). Score information: A4, 6 pages, 135 kB Copyright: CPDL
- Edition notes:
General Information
Title: Binsey Poplars
Composer: Charles West
Lyricist: Gerard Manley Hopkins
Number of voices: 5vv Voicing: SAATB
Genre: Secular, Lament
Language: English
Instruments: A cappella
First published: 2020
Description:
External websites:
Original text and translations
English text
My aspens dear, whose airy cages quelled,
Quelled or quenched in leaves the leaping sun,
All felled, felled, are all felled;
Of a fresh and following folded rank
Not spared, not one
that dandled a sandalled
shadow that swam or sank
on meadow and river and wind-wandering weed-winding bank.
O if we but knew what we do
When we delve or hew –
Hack and rack the growing green!
Since country is so tender
To touch, her being so slender,
That, (like this sleek and seeing ball
but a prick will make no eye at all,)
Where we, (even where we mean
to) mend her we end her, -
When we hew or delve:
After-comers cannot guess the beauty been.
Ten or twelve, only ten or twelve
Strokes of havoc unselve
The sweet especial scene,
rural scene, a rural scene,
sweet especial rural scene.