Baritone Michael Lampard will premiere my new song cycle “Four Shakespeare Songs” at a concert coming up at the end of January in Hobart. More details to come….
Here are the texts I used:
Four Shakespeare Songs
Over Hill, Over Dale
Over hill, over dale,
Through bush, through briar,
Over park, over pale,
Through flood, through fire`
I do wander everywhere.
Swifter than the moon’s sphere;
And I serve the fairy queen,
To dew her orbs upon the green.
The cowslips tall her pensioners be;
In their gold coats spots you see;
Those be rubies, fairy favours,
In those freckles live their savours:
I must go seek some dew-drops here,
And hang a pearl in every cowslip’s ear.
Come unto these yellow sands
Come unto these yellow sands,
Then take hands:
Curtsied when you have and kissed,
The wild waves whist:
Foot it featly here and there;
And, sweet sprites, the burthen bear.
Hark, hark!
Bow-wow.
The watch dogs bark;
Bow-wow.
Hark, hark!
I hear the strain of strutting chanticleer
Cry, Cock-a-diddle dow.
Take, O Take Those Lips Away
Take, o take those lips away,
That so sweetly were forsworn;
And those eyes, the break of day,
Lights that do mislead the morn:
But my kisses bring again;
Seals of love, but seal’d in vain, sealed in vain.
Hide, o hide those hills of snow
that thy frozen bosom wears,
On whose tops the pinks that grow
are yet of those that April wears;
But first set my poor heart free,
Bound in those icy chains by thee.
Come Away Death
Come away, come away, death,
And in sad cypress let me be laid;
Fly away, fly away, breath;
I am slain by a fair cruel maid.
My shroud of white, stuck all with yew,
O prepare it!
My part of death, no one so true
Did share it.
Not a flower, not a flower sweet,
On my black coffin let there be strown;
Not a friend, not a friend greet
My poor corpse, where my bones shall be thrown:
A thousand, thousand sighs to save,
Lay me, O where
Sad true lover never find my grave,
To weep there!
