Departed Joys (William Webster Pearson)
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- (Posted 2023-11-27) CPDL #77627:
- Editor: David Anderson (submitted 2023-11-27). Score information: Letter, 8 pages, 564 kB Copyright: Personal
- Edition notes:
General Information
Title: Departed Joys
Composer: William Webster Pearson
Lyricist: Thomas Moore
Number of voices: 4vv Voicing: SATB
Genre: Secular, Partsong
Language: English
Instruments: A cappella
First published: 1877 Novello, Ewer, and Co.
Description:
External websites:
Original text and translations
English text
As slow our ship her foamy track
Against the wind was cleaving,
Her trembling pennant still looked back
To that dear isle ’twas leaving.
So loath we part from all we love,
From all the links that bind us;
So turn our hearts, as on we rove,
To those we’ve left behind us!
(omitted in Pearson’s setting)
When, round the bowl, of vanished years
We talk with joyous seeming,—
With smiles that might as well be tears,
So faint, so sad their beaming;
While memory brings us back again
Each early tie that twined us,
O, sweet’s the cup that circles then
To those we’ve left behind us!
And when, in other climes, we meet
Some isle or vale enchanting,
Where all looks flowery, wild, and sweet,
And naught but love is wanting;
We think how great had been our bliss
If Heaven had but assigned us
To live and die in scenes like this,
With some we’ve left behind us!
As travellers oft look back at eve
When eastward darkly going,
To gaze upon that light they leave
Still faint behind them glowing,—
So, when the close of pleasure’s day
To gloom hath near consigned us,
We turn to catch one fading ray
Of joy that’s left behind us.