On music (Charles Villiers Stanford)

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• (Posted 2024-04-18)  CPDL #80280:     

Editor: David Anderson (submitted 2024-04-18).   Score information: Letter, 8 pages, 488 kB   Copyright: Personal

Edition notes:

General Information

Title: On music
Composer: Charles Villiers Stanford
Lyricist: Thomas Moore
Number of voices: 4vv   Voicing: SATB
Genre: Secular, Partsong

Language: English
Instruments: A cappella

First published: 1924 Deane & Sons
Description: 

Original text and translations

English text

When thro’ life unblest we rove,
Losing all that made life dear,
Should some notes we used to love
In days of boyhood, meet our ear,
Oh! how welcome breathes the strain!
Wakening thoughts that long have slept;
Kindling former smiles again
In faded eyes that long have wept.

Like the gale, that sighs along
Beds of Oriental flowers,
Is the grateful breath of song,
That once was heard in happier hours;
Filled with balm, the gale sighs on,
Though the flowers have sunk in death;
So, when pleasure’s dream is gone,
Its memory lives in Music’s breath.

Music! oh how faint, how weak
Language fades before thy spell!
Why should Feeling ever speak,
When thou canst breathe her soul so well?
Friendship’s balmy words may feign,
Love’s are even more false than they;
Oh! ’tis only Music’s strain
Can sweetly soothe, and not betray.