Binsey Poplars (Charles West)

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• (Posted 2022-08-28)  CPDL #70581:       

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: 

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.