Sweetest melancholy (Walter Cecil Macfarren)
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(Posted 2023-11-13) CPDL #77269:
- Editor: David Anderson (submitted 2023-11-13). Score information: Letter, 8 pages, 359 kB Copyright: Personal
- Edition notes:
- (Posted 2019-11-03) CPDL #55825:
- Editor: James Gibb (submitted 2019-11-03). Score information: A4, 6 pages, 102 kB Copyright: CPDL
- Edition notes: Includes a keyboard reduction of the a cappella choral score.
General Information
Title: Sweetest melancholy
Composer: Walter Cecil Macfarren
Lyricist: John Fletcher
Number of voices: 4vv Voicing: SATB
Genre: Secular, Partsong
Language: English
Instruments: A cappella
First published: 1876 in Novello's Part-Song Book (2nd series), Vol. 9, no. 282
Description:
External websites:
Original text and translations
English text
Hence, all you vain delights,
As short as are the nights
Wherein you spend your folly!
There 's naught in this life sweet,
If men were wise to see't,
But only melancholy—
O sweetest melancholy!
Welcome, folded arms and fixed eyes,
A sight that piercing mortifies,
A look that's fasten'd to the ground,
A tongue chain'd up without a sound!
Fountain-heads and pathless groves,
Places which pale passion loves!
Moonlight walks, when all the fowls
Are warmly housed, save bats and owls!
A midnight bell, a parting groan—
These are the sounds we feed upon:
Then stretch our bones in a still gloomy valley,
Nothing's so dainty sweet as lovely melancholy.