From The Archive: Bring In this Timeless Grave (text by AE Houseman)
May 22, 2012
(Other songs I wrote with text by A.E. Houseman)
In an earlier post about George Butterworth and Morris Dancing, I mentioned a song cycle I had written with text by A.E. Houseman. Butterworth wrote many songs from the same volume of poetry, A Shropshire Lad. There were 5 songs in the set I wrote:
1. Bring in this timeless grave
2. With Rue my heart is laden
3. If it chance
4. Into my heart
5. The true lover
The performance was part of a composition seminar at the University of Pittsburgh, perhaps in 1997 but possibly in 1994. Prism Ensemble came in for readings of student work. The singer was Mary Nessinger, but I'm afraid I don't have a note of the pianist.
Here is Bring In this Timeless Grave
| BRING, in this timeless grave to throw | |
| No cypress, sombre on the snow; | |
| Snap not from the bitter yew | |
| His leaves that live December through; | |
| Break no rosemary, bright with rime | 5 |
| And sparkling to the cruel crime; | |
| Nor plod the winter land to look | |
| For willows in the icy brook | |
| To cast them leafless round him: bring | |
| To spray that ever buds in spring. | 10 |
| But if the Christmas field has kept | |
| Awns the last gleaner overstept, | |
| Or shrivelled flax, whose flower is blue | |
| A single season, never two; | |
| Or if one haulm whose year is o’er | 15 |
| Shivers on the upland frore, | |
| —Oh, bring from hill and stream and plain | |
| Whatever will not flower again, | |
| To give him comfort: he and those | |
| Shall bide eternal bedfellows | 20 |
| Where low upon the couch he lies | |
| Whence he never shall arise. |