My favorite Ralph Vaughan Williams song...

[ceebeegee]

Ginmar, on my flist, was rhapsodizing about the English language (to honor the English), and other people were quoting various English poems and plays and such. I quoted Vaughan Williams.

Within the woodlands, flow'ry gladed,
By the oak trees' mossy moot,
The shining grass blades, timber-shaded,
Now do quiver underfoot;
And birds do whistle overhead,
And water's bubbling in its bed;
And there, for me, the apple tree
Do lean down low in Linden Lea.

When leaves, that lately were a-springing,
Now do fade within the copse,
And painted birds do hush their singing,
Up upon the timber tops;
And brown-leaved fruits a-turning red,
In cloudless sunshine overhead,
With fruit for me, the apple tree
Do lean down low in Linden Lea.

Let other folk make money faster
In the air of dark-roomed towns;
I don't dread a peevish master,
Though no man may heed my frowns.
I be free to go abroad,
Or take again my homeward road
To where, for me, the apple tree
Do lean down low in Linden Lea.

I sang a choral setting of this in high school and loved it. I always had in my head this beautiful, half-sunny, half-shadowed glen somewhere in the Lakes Region, with an apple tree bending down...The English have a real genius at elevating the ordinary..."to me, the meanest flower that blows can give thoughts that do often lie too deep for tears."*


*"Ode: Intimations of Immortality from Recollections of Early Childhood," William Wordsworth