Lunchtime Concerts Online

Thursdays at 1pm

15th October – 3rd December

www.leicesterinternationalmusicfestival.org.uk Welcome to the sixth in our series of eight lunchtime concerts between now and December.

As with our festival, this concert is free to watch on our YouTube Channel, partly as a result of the generous response to our Crowdfunder campaign, but also because of the support for these young artists from the Countess of Munster Musical Trust. We are also grateful for a donation from the Cavatina Chamber Music Trust.

LIMF was not eligible for support from the Culture Recovery Fund and we would ask you to consider donating for watching these concerts in order to fund our continuing mission to give work to musicians and bring concerts to our loyal audience who are unable to go to live events this winter.

The help of staff at the Leicester Museum and Art Gallery during recording sessions was invaluable and we would also like to thank Crosscut Media for their hard work and expertise in producing these videos.

Lunchtime Concert 6

Anna Cavaliero - soprano

Sholto Kynoch - piano

Anna is supported by the Countess of Munster Musical Trust

Britten: (1) Let the florid music praise; (3) Seascape from 'On This Island'

Poulenc: Les Chemins de l’amour Poulenc: Deux poèmes de Louis Aragon: (1) ‘C’; (2) Fêtes Galantes

Bartók: Ha kimegyek arr’ a magos tetőre from Eight Hungarian Folksongs Bartók: Székely Lassú from Twenty Hungarian Folksongs

Walton: Three Songs after Edith Sitwell: (1) Daphne; (2) Through Gilded Trellises; (3) Old Sir Faulk

Undine Smith Moore: Love Let the Wind Cry...How I Adore Thee Florence Price: Night

Britten: The Last Rose of Summer

Anna Cavaliero - soprano

British-Hungarian soprano Anna Cavaliero is a Samling Artist, City Music Foundation Artist, and Handel House Talent Scheme Artist. She was also a three-time Britten-Pears Young Artist, and a 2019 Alvarez Young Artist with Garsington Opera. In 2018-19, Anna joined the opera studio of the Opéra National de Lyon, and she returns in 2021 to perform the roles of Bergère/Chouette/Chauve- souris/Pastourelle in Ravel’s L'Enfant et les sortilèges.

Anna has recently performed in concert at Wigmore Hall, Handel House, Hereford Cathedral, and Eton College Chapel, as well as for Leicester International Music Festival with pianist Sholto Kynoch, the Oxford Lieder Festival with harpsichordist Julian Perkins, and East Finchley Arts Festival with the London Mozart Players.

Operatic engagements include Ground Ivy/ The Fairy Queen, and Zerlina/ Don Giovanni (Waterperry Opera Festival); Soliste, Mme Rossignol/Romeo and Juliet (Boris Blacher, Théâtre de La Croix Rousse/ Opéra de Lyon); Die Prinzessin/The Hogboon (Peter Maxwell-Davies, Philharmonie de Luxembourg); Fortuna, Damigella, Venere/ L’incoronazione di Poppea and Euridice (cover)/Orfeo ed Euridice (Longborough Festival Opera); Mab, Adelaide/ The Enchanted Pig (Jonathan Dove, Hampstead Garden Opera); and Galatea/Acis and Galatea, serenata in tre parti (Snape Maltings).

Anna studied English with a choral scholarship at Trinity College, Cambridge, before graduating with distinction from a masters at the Royal College of Music. She then completed her postgraduate studies at the Mozarteum in Salzburg with soprano Barbara Bonney.

In 2019, Anna won the Opera Prelude Singer’s Prize, and was a semi- finalist in the London Mozart Competition. She was awarded second prize in the Lies Askonas competition 2017, and was the CD Broad visiting scholar to Rice University, Houston, in 2012/13.

Sholto Kynoch – piano

Sholto Kynoch is a sought-after pianist who specialises in song and chamber music. He is the founder and Artistic Director of the Oxford Lieder Festival, which won a prestigious Royal Philharmonic Society Award in 2015, cited for its ‘breadth, depth and audacity’ of programming. In July 2018, Sholto was elected a Fellow of the Royal Academy of Music in the RAM Honours.

Recent recitals have taken him to Wigmore Hall, Heidelberger Frühling in Germany, the Zeist International Lied Festival in Holland, the LIFE Victoria festival and Palau de la Música in Barcelona, the Opéra de Lille, Kings Place in London, Piano Salon Christophori in Berlin and many other leading venues nationally and internationally. He has performed with singers including Louise Alder, Benjamin Appl, Sophie Daneman, Tara Erraught, Robert Holl, James Gilchrist, Dietrich Henschel, Katarina Karnéus, Wolfgang Holzmair, Jonathan Lemalu, Stephan Loges, Daniel Norman, Christoph Prégardien, Joan Rodgers, Kate Royal, Birgid Steinberger, Anna Stéphany and Mark Stone, amongst many others.

Together with violinist Jonathan Stone and cellist Christian Elliott, Sholto is the pianist of the Phoenix Piano Trio, an ensemble that has been praised for creating a ‘musical narrative of tremendous, involving depth’. In recent years, he has curated several series of recitals at the National Gallery, including their ‘Monet and Architecture’ exhibition in 2018. He has recorded, live at the Oxford Lieder Festival, the first complete edition of the songs of Hugo Wolf. Other recordings include discs of Schubert and Schumann lieder, the complete songs of John Ireland and Havergal Brian with baritone Mark Stone, a recital disc with Anna Stéphany, and several CDs with the Phoenix Trio. Britten: (1) Let the florid music praise; (3) Seascape from 'On This Island' Op 11

Britten and Auden first met in the summer of 1935, when they both found employment with the Post Office Film Unit, supplying music and words for the promotional documentaries that the GPO was producing. The most famous of these was, of course, The Night Mail (1936).

Britten had just left the RCM. The politics and open acceptance of being gay amongst Auden’s circle were an exciting and intriguing prospect for the young composer from a background which had been overwhelmingly conservative.

In the song cycle ‘On this Island’, Britten sets a number of Auden’s poems from the collection, ‘Look Stranger!’, published in 1936. The music was written between May and October the following year, at a time when the composer was grieving, not only for his parents, but also his close friend, Peter Burra. The length of time it took him to complete the cycle may also be explained by the last minute commission he received from Boyd Neel for a Salzburg Festival piece, resulting in his first major international work, ‘Variations on a Theme of Frank Bridge’.

Britten was offered advice by Bridge in respect of the piano parts for the songs: it was initially rejected, but he did later make some changes to reflect his teacher’s suggestions.

‘Let the florid music…..’ is a fanfare, entirely apt for the start of our concert. There are echoes of baroque music in the accompaniment, but perhaps the most striking and novel feature is that the two verses are so different: already in this very early song, we see Britten’s preoccupation with music that closely reflects the words. In ‘Seascape’, listen for the ‘swaying sound of the sea’ in the syncopated ebb and flow of the piano part’s left hand, one of the earliest examples of Britten’s musical depictions of the ocean’s power.

Let the florid music praise

Let the florid music praise, The flute and the trumpet, Beauty's conquest of your face: In that land of flesh and bone, Where from citadels on high Her imperial standards fly, Let the hot sun Shine on, shine on.

O but the unloved have had power, The weeping and striking, Always: time will bring their hour; Their secretive children walk Through your vigilance of breath To unpardonable death, And my vows break Before his look.

Seascape

Look, stranger, at this island now The leaping light for your delight discovers, Stand stable here And silent be, That through the channels of the ear May wander like a river The swaying sound of the sea.

Here at the small field’s ending pause Where the chalk wall falls to the foam, and its tall ledges Oppose the pluck And knock of the tide, And the shingle scrambles after the sucking surf, and the gull lodges A moment on its sheer side.

Far off like floating seeds the ships Diverge on urgent voluntary errands; And the full view Indeed may enter And move in memory as now these clouds do, That pass the harbour mirror And all the summer through the water saunter.

Poulenc: Les Chemins de l’amour

Les Chemins de l’amour (The paths of love) was composed by Poulenc in 1940, the words by the playwright, Jean Anouilh, best known for his dramatization of Sophocles’ Antigone, a coded attack on the wartime Vichy government. The song received its première at a performance of another of Anouilh’s plays, Léocadia, and has become one of the composer’s most frequently performed. Caught up in admiration for the talented singer and actress, Yvonne Printemps, who gave that first performance, Poulenc wrote that the composition lifted his spirits from the ‘menace of the occupation which weighs on me - what a sad epoch is ours, and when and how will it all finish up?’

Les chemins qui montent à la mer ont gardé de notre passage Des fleurs effeuillées et l'écho, sous leurs arbres, de notre rire clair. Hélas! Les jours de bonheur radieux, de joies envolées, Je vais sans en trouver trace dans mon cœur. Chemins de mon amour, je vous cherche toujours, Chemins perdus vous n'êtes plus et vos défauts sont sourds. Chemin du désespoir, chemin du souvenir, chemin du premier jour Divin chemin d'amour. Si je dois l'oublier un jour, la vie effaçant toutes choses Je veux qu'en mon cœur un souvenir repose plus fort que notre amour Le souvenir du chemin Où tremblante et toute éperdue, Un jour j’ai senti sur moi brûler tes mains.

The paths that lead to the sea have kept, from our passing-by, Flowers with fallen petals and the echo, beneath their trees, of our bright laughter. Alas! The days of happiness, radiant joys have now flown, I wander without finding a trace of them in my heart. Paths of my love, I still search for you, Lost paths, you are no more and your echoes are muffled. Paths of despair, paths of memory, paths of the first day, Divine path of love. If one day I forget, life wiping out everything, I wish that, in my heart, one memory remains, stronger than our love. The memory of the path Where trembling and quite distracted, I one day felt your burning hands.

Poulenc: Deux poèmes de Louis Aragon: 1: ‘C’ 2: Fêtes Galantes

These songs were composed towards the end of the summer of 1943, when Poulenc was given a book by the surrealist writer, Luis Aragon, Les yeux d’Elsa. The contrasting moods of the two poems align neatly with Poulenc’s own practise of following slow, serious music with the skittish and often comedic.

The first song alludes to the bridges of ‘C’, sometimes called ‘Cé’, which are the four ‘Caesar Bridges’ near Angers in the Loire valley. In 51 BCE the Gauls were defeated there by the Romans and in 1940, when the Germans attacked at the same spot, the French were again defeated.

In ‘C’, Aragon begins with ghostly memories of the ancient defeat, replete with gothic imagery. He then turns to the present time, the destruction wrought by the Nazi forces and expresses his despair at the fate of his beloved, abandoned France.

‘C’

J’ai traversé les ponts de Cé C’est là que tout a commencé Une chanson des temps passés Parle d’un chevalier blessé D’une rose sur la chaussée Et d’un corsage délacé Du château d’un duc insensé Et des cygnes dans les fossés De la prairie où vient danser Une éternelle fiancée Et j’ai bu comme un lait glacé Le long lai des gloires faussées La Loire emporte mes pensées Avec les voitures versées Et les armes désamorcées Et les larmes mal effaces O ma France ô ma délaissée J’ai traversé les ponts de Cé.

I have crossed the bridges of Cé. It is there that it all began: A song of bygone days Tells of a wounded knight, Of a rose on the highway And an unlaced bodice. Of the castle of a mad duke And swans on the moat. Of the meadow where an eternal betrothed comes dancing And I drank like iced milk the long lay of false glories. The Loire carries my thoughts away With the overturned cars And the unprimed weapons And the ill-concealed tears O my France, O my forsaken France, I have crossed the bridges of Cé.

The second song in this set is a bitter parody of a music hall patter song, each surreal image reinforcing the idea of a world turned on its head. Much like Shostakovich, Poulenc portrays the horror of life under a dictatorship with the most banal sounding cabaret music.

The song is marked Incroyablement vite (Unbelievably fast), with a tempo marking ‘not less than crotchet = 152’!

Fêtes Galantes

On voit des marquis sur des bicyclettes On voit des marlous en cheval jupon On voit des morveux avec des voilettes On voit des pompiers brûler les pompons On voit des mots jetés à la voirie On voit des mots élevés au pavois On voit les pieds des enfants de Marie On voit le dos des diseuses à voix On voit des voitures à gazogène On voit aussi des voitures à bras On voit des lascars que les longs nez gênent On voit des coîons de dix-huit carats On voit ici ce que l’on voit ailleurs On voit des demoiselles dévoyées On voit des voyous on voit des voyeurs On voit sous les ponts passer les noyés On voit chômer les marchands de chaussures On voit mourir d’ennui les mireurs d’œufs On voit péricliter les valeurs sûres Et fuir la vie à la six quatre deux.

You see fops on cycles You see pimps in kilts You see whipper-snappers with veils You see firemen burning their pompoms You see words hurled on the rubbish heap You see words praised to the skies You see the feet or orphan children You see the backs of cabaret singers

You see cars run on gazogene You see handcarts too You see sly fellows hindered by long noses You see unmitigated idiots You see here what you see everywhere You see girls who are led astray You see guttersnipes you see Peeping Toms You see drowned corpses float beneath bridges You see out-of-work shoemakers You see egg-candlers bored to death You see securities tumble And life rushing pell-mell by

Bartók: Ha kimegyek arr’ a magos tetőre from Eight Hungarian Folksongs

During Bartók’s studies in Budapest, he developed an admiration for Brahms, Strauss (whom he met) and Debussy, but it was his friendship with fellow- student, Zoltán Kodály, which led him down the path towards originality. Both young men began to travel into the countryside to collect folksongs to inspire their compositions.

It was in 1907, on a trip to Transylvania, that he began this process. He was in the area – a young man in love - visiting the young violinist Stefi Geyer, to whom he would dedicate his first violin concerto.

The collection was initially known as ‘Five Székely Songs’ or Five Old Hungarian Folk Songs from Csík County and was premièred in Budapest on 27th November 1911 by the opera singer Dezső Róna, with Bartók himself at the piano. Ha kimegyek arr’ a magos tetőre Találok én szeretőre kettőre. Ej, baj, baj, baj, de nagy baj, Hogy a babám szive olyan mint a vaj! Nem kell nekem sem a kettő, sem az egy, Azt szeretem, aki eddig szeretett. Ej, baj, baj, baj, de nagy baj, Hogy a babám szive olyan mint a vaj!

If I go up to the high mountains I will find a sweetheart, maybe two. Trouble, trouble, what a lot of trouble, That my darling’s heart is as soft as butter. But I don’t want either the one or two; I want the one I love who also loves me. Trouble, trouble, what a lot of trouble, That my darling’s heart is as soft as butter.

Bartók: Székely Lassú from Twenty Hungarian Folksongs

This set of folksongs was finished in 1929, marking the culmination of Bartók’s many years of research. Most of the songs were published in a book entitled A Magyar népdal (The Hungarian Folk Song) and provided the raw material for the composer’s work based on folk material. The cycle was first performed in Budapest, with Bartók at the piano.

Székely Lassú begins the second set of four songs, entitled ‘Dancing Songs’. The other sets are entitled ‘Sad Songs’, ‘Diverse Songs’ and ‘New Style Songs’.

The Székely (‘frontier guards’) are an ethnic group whose lands are now part of Romania, although they still identify as Hungarian. Lassú simply means ‘slow’.

Azt akartam én megtudni, Szabad-e másét szeretni, jaj, jaj, jajajaj; Tudakoztam, de nem szabad, Így a szívem gyászban marad, Így a szívem gyászban marad, jaj, jaj, jajajaj.

Jaj Istenem, add megérnem, Kit szeretek, avval élnem, jaj, jaj, jajajaj; Ha azt meg nem adod érnem, én Istenem, végy el engem, Én Istenem, végy el engem, jaj, jaj, jajajaj, jajajaj.

I wanted to know Should I love another, woe, woe, woe! I inquired, but no, So my heart remains in mourning, So my heart remains in mourning, woe, woe, woe!

Oh my God, help me understand Who I love to live with, woe, woe, woe! If you don't give her to me, My god, take me, My God, take me, woe, woe, woe, woe!

Walton: Three Songs after Edith Sitwell: (1) Daphne; (2) Through Gilded Trellises; (3) Old Sir Faulk

The Sitwells met the young composer at Oxford: Walton was introduced to Sacheverell by his friend, Siegfried Sassoon, and their friendship developed to the extent that, when ‘Willie’ failed his exams and was ‘sent down’, he was invited to live with the Sitwells in London.

Edith Sitwell began to publish her series of poems, best known as Façade, in 1918: the brothers suggested that Edith’s poems might be set to music, and the obvious composer for this task was their lodger, Willie. At first Walton refused, but he was eventually won over. Edith came over from from Bayswater to her brothers’ Chelsea house in the autumn of 1921, with Osbert recounting: ‘I remember very well the rather long sessions, lasting for two or three hours, which my sister and the composer used to have, when together they read the words, she going over them again and again, while he marked and accented them for his own guidance, to show where the precise stress and emphasis fell, the exact inflection or deflection.’ The title was derived from a derogatory comment made about Edith’s poetry, which they all found amusing.

At Façade's public premiere in 1923, Edith declaimed her verses through a megaphone from behind a screen, while Walton conducted a six-piece ensemble in what the Manchester Guardian denounced as a ‘relentless cacophony’. Noel Coward ostentatiously walked out. The clarinettist asked Walton, ‘Has a clarinet player ever done you an injury?’ Edward Dent, wrote in the Illustrated London News: ‘The audience was at first inclined to treat the whole thing as an absurd joke, but there is always a surprisingly serious element in Miss Sitwell's poetry and Mr Walton's music … which soon induced the audience to listen with breathless attention.’

Walton subsequently set three selections from Façade as songs for soprano and piano (1932), to be sung rather than spoken.

Daphne

When green as a river was the barley Green as a river the rye I waded deep and began to parley With a youth whom I heard sigh "I seek," said he, "a lovely lady A nymph as bright as a queen Like a tree that drips with pearls her shady Locks of hair were seen And all the rivers became her flocks Though their wool you cannot shear, - Because of the love of her flowing locks. The kingly Sun like a swain Came strong, unheeding of her scorn Bathing in deeps where she has lain Sleeping upon her river lawn And chasing her starry satyr train She fled, and changed into a tree, - That lovely fair-haired lady. And now I seek through the sere summer Where no trees are shady.

Through gilded trellises

Through gilded trellises Of the heat, Dolores, Inez, Manuccia, Isabel, Lucia, Mock Time that flies. "Lovely bird, will you stay and sing, Flirting your sheened wing,- Peck with your beak, and cling To our balconies?" They flirt their fans, flaunting "O silence enchanting As music!" Then slanting Their eyes, Like gilded or emerald grapes, They make mantillas, capes, Hiding their simian shapes. Sighes Each lady, "Our spadille Is done."...Dance the quadrille from Hell's towers to Seville; Surprise Their siesta," Dolores Said. Through gilded trellises Of the heat, spangles Pelt down through the tangles Of bell flowers; each dangles Her castanets, shutters Fall while the heat mutters, With sounds like a mandoline Or tinkled tambourine... Ladies, Time dies!

Old Sir Faulk

Old Sir Faulk Tall as a stork Before the honeyed fruits of dawn were ripe, would walk And stalk with a gun The reynard-colored sun Among the pheasant-feathered corn the unicorn has torn, forlorn the Smock-faced sheep Sit And Sleep Periwigged as William and Mary, weep... 'Sally, Mary, Mattie, what's the matter, why cry?' The huntsman and the reynard-colored sun and I sigh 'Oh, the nursery-maid Meg With a leg like a peg Chased the feathered dreams like hens, and when they laid an egg In the sheepskin Meadows Where The serene King James would steer Horse and hounds, then he From the shade of a tree Picked it up as spoil to boil 'for nursery tea' said the mourners In the Corn, towers strain Feathered tall as a crane And whistling down the feathered rain, old Noah goes again-- An old dull mome With a head like a pome Seeing the world as a bare egg Laid by the feathered air: Meg Would be three of these For the nursery teas Of Japhet, Shem and Ham; she gave it Underneath the trees Where the boiling Water Hissed Like the goose-king's feathered daughter--kissed Pot and pan and copper kettle Put upon their proper mettle Lest the flood begin again through these!

Undine Smith Moore: Love Let the Wind Cry...How I Adore Thee

Undine Smith Moore (1904-1989) was known as the ‘Dean of Black Women Composers’. She was a distinguished university professor, who wrote many songs and choral works: her oratorio, telling the story of Martin Luther King Jr, was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize in 1981.

The music of the Baptist church filled her childhood, during which she sang and received piano lessons. In 1924, she won a scholarship to the Juilliard School in New York.

After she graduated, Undine joined the staff of Virginia State University, where she taught piano, organ and music theory for over forty years. She was instrumental in ensuring that African American music was taught in schools and colleges, co-founding the Black Music Centre at Virginia State College, which aimed to educate its members about the “contributions of Black people to the music of the United States and the world”. She described it as the proudest moment in her career the fulfilment of her ambition to break down barriers: ‘One of the most evil effects of racism in my time was the limits it placed upon the aspirations of blacks, so that though I have been ‘making up’ and creating music all my life, in my childhood or even in college I would not have thought of calling myself a composer or aspiring to be one.’ Most of Smith Moore’s compositions date from the 1950s onwards, when she became interested in drawing upon the musical forms of her roots and of her childhood: ‘...the songs my mother sang while cooking dinner; the melodies my father hummed after work moved me very deeply… In making these arrangements my aim was not to make something ‘better’ than what was sung. I thought them so beautiful that I wanted to have them experienced in a variety of ways -- by concert choirs, soloists, and by instrumental groups.’

‘Love let the wind cry….’ was first performed at the wedding of Undine Smith Moore’s students, Jewel and Leon Taylor Thompson (to whom it is dedicated) on June 10, 1961. Dr Jewel Taylor Thompson is herself now a choral director and a distinguished teacher at Hunter College, New York City University. She is particularly known for her book about Samuel Coleridge Taylor.

Love let the wind cry Love, let the clear call On the dark mountain, Of the tree cricket, Bending the ash trees Frailest of creatures, And the tall hemlocks Green as the young grass, With the great voice of Mark with his trilling Thunderous legions, Resonant bell-note, How I adore thee. How I adore thee.

Let the hoarse torrent Let the glad lark-song In the blue canyon, Over the meadow, Murmuring mightily That melting lyric Out of the gray mist Of molten silver, Of primal chaos Be for a signal Cease not proclaiming To listening mortals, How I adore thee. How I adore thee.

Let the long rhythm But, more than all sounds, Of crunching rollers, Surer, serener, Breaking and bursting Fuller of passion On the white seaboard And exultation, Titan and tireless, Let the hushed whisper Tell, while the world stands, In thine own heart say, How I adore thee. How I adore thee.

Florence Price: Night

Words by Louise C. Wallace

Florence Price (1887-1953) grew up in Little Rock, Arkansas, a contemporary of William Grant Still, educated at the same remarkable school which fostered the talents of its black pupils. After her marriage and following a lynching in Little Rock, she moved to Chicago where she continued her musical studies and began composing.

Following her divorce in 1931, she was forced to find work which would pay the bills and support her children: she began working as an organist for silent film screenings and composing songs for radio advertisements. However, in 1933 she was persuaded to submit her Symphony in E minor for the prestigious Wanamaker Foundation Awards, winning first prize and a performance by the Chicago Symphony Orchestra.

Price’s other major triumph was when one of her most famous songs, ‘My Soul’s Been Anchored in de Lord’, was chosen for a concert planned for Easter Sunday, 1939 in Washington D.C.’s Constitution Hall. The star performer was to be the contralto Marian Anderson, but this plan was rejected because she was black. Washington D.C. was a segregated city and the regulations stated that only white performers could appear in the hall. The audience would also be segregated.

Eleanor Roosevelt, the First Lady, intervened and the result was an outdoor concert, held on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial and broadcast live on the radio. Anderson closed the evening with Price’s song, reaching hundreds of thousands of people across America that evening. In common with many other black American composers, Florence Price’s work combines the European classical tradition in which she was trained and the haunting melodies of African American spirituals and folk tunes. Her works were performed by eleven major orchestras and she became a cultural icon in Chicago. After her death, her work was rather neglected, but a new generation has recently been eager to return her music to concert platforms across the USA and beyond.

Night

Night comes, a Madonna clad in scented blue. Rose red her mouth and deep her eyes, She lights her stars, and turns to where, Beneath her silver lamp the moon, Upon a couch of shadow lies A dreamy child, The wearied Day.

Britten: The Last Rose of Summer

Benjamin Britten made many arrangements of folksongs, mostly intended for the recitals he gave with Peter Pears. As we noted in the early songs at the beginning of today’s recital, his music is finely attuned to the words, painting vivid pictures in tone colour and harmony.

Britten’s fourth published volume of folksong arrangements was dedicated to songs from Moore’s Irish Melodies (1958). It includes The Last Rose of Summer, with a brooding accompaniment which suggests depths of loneliness far beyond the original’s song’s gentle wistfulness.

The Last Rose of Summer

'Tis the last rose of summer, Left blooming alone; All her lovely companions Are faded and gone; No flow'r of her kindred, No rosebud is nigh To reflect back her blushes, Or give sigh for sigh.

I'll not leave thee, thou lone one, To pine on the stem; Since the lovely are sleeping, Go, sleep thou with them; Thus kindly I scatter Thy leaves o'er the bed, Where thy mates of the garden Lie senseless and dead.

So soon may I follow, When friendships decay, And from Love's shining circle The gems drop away! When true hearts lie wither'd. And fond ones are flown, Oh! who would inhabit This bleak world alone? When true hearts lie wither’d, and fond ones are flown, Oh! who would inhabit this bleak world alone?

Kevin Rush, November 2020