L'Allegro ed il Pensieroso (Charles Hubert Hastings Parry)

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  • (Posted 2009-05-03)  CPDL #16388:  Network.png
Contributor: Aldona Jones (submitted 2009-05-03).  Score information: A4, 92 pages, 2.58 MB   Copyright: Public Domain
Edition notes:

General Information

Title: L'Allegro ed Il Penseroso
Composer: Charles Hubert Hastings Parry
Lyricist: John Milton

Number of voices: 4vv   Voicing: SATB, with Bass and Sopr. Solo
Genre: SecularCantata

Language: English
Instruments: Piano

First published: 1891 by Novello and Company, London
Description: 

External websites:

Original text and translations

English.png English text

Hence loathed Melancholy
Of Cerberus and blackest Midnight born,
In Stygian cave forlorn
'Mongst horrid shapes and sights unholy.
Find out some uncouth cell,
Where brooding darkness spreads his jealous wings,
And the night-raven sings;
There, under ebon shades, and low-browed rocks,
As ragged as thy locks,
In dark Cimmerian desert ever dwell.
But come, thou goddess fair and free,
In heaven yclept Euphrosyne,
And by men, heart easing Mirth.

Haste thee, nymph, and bring with thee
Jest and youthful Jollity,
Quips and Cranks, and wanton wiles,
Nods, and becks, and wreathed smiles,
Such as hang on Hebe's cheek,
And love to live in dimple sleek;
Sport that wrinkled Care derides,
And Laughter holding both his sides.

And in thy right hand lead with thee,
The Mountain Nymph, sweet Liberty;
And if I give thee honour due,
Mirth, admit me of thy crew
To live with her, and live with thee,
In unreproved pleasures free;

Haste thee, nymph, and bring with thee
Mirth and youthful Jollity
Quips and Cranks, and wanton wiles,
Nods, and becks, and wreathed smiles,
Sport that wrinkled Care derides,
Laughter holding both his sides.
And in thy right hand lead with thee
The Mountain Nymph, sweet Liberty;
And if I give thee honour due,
Mirth, admit me of thy crew
To live with her, and live with thee,
In unreproved pleasures free.

To hear the Lark begin his flight,
And singing startle the dull night,
From his watch-tower in the skies,
Till the dappled dawn arise;
Then to come in spite of sorrow,
And at my window bid good morrow,
Through the sweet-briar, or the vine,
Or the twisted eglantine.

While the cock with lively din,
Scatters the rear of darkness thin,
And to the stack, or the barn door,
Stoutly struts his dames before,
Oft list'ning how the hounds and horn
Cheerly rouse the slumbering morn,
From the side of some hoar hill,
Through the high wood echoing shrill.

Sometime walking not unseen
By hedgerow elms, on hillocks green,
Right against the eastern gate,
Where the great sun begins his state,
Robed in flames, and amber light,
The clouds in thousand liveries dight.

Straight mine eye hath caught new pleasures
While the landscape round it measures,
Russet lawns, and fallows gray,
Where the nibbling flocks do stray,
Mountains on whose barren breast
The labouring clouds do often rest:
Meadows trim with daisies pied,
Shallow brooks, and rivers wide.
Towers and battlements it sees
Bosomed high in tufted trees,
Where perhaps some beauty lies.

The Cynosure of neighbouring eyes.

Towered cities please us then,
And the busy hum of men,
Where throngs of knights and barons bold,
In weeds of peace high triumphs hold,
With store of Ladies, whose bright eyes
Rain influence, and judge the prize
Of Wit, or arms, while both contend
To win her Grace, whom all commend.

There let Hymen oft appear
With saffron robe and taper clear,
With pomp, and feast, and revelry,
With mask, and antique pageantry,
Such sights as youthful poets dream
On Summer eves by haunted stream.

And ever, against eating cares,
Lap me in soft Lydian airs,
Married to immortal verse
Such as the meeting soul may pierce
In notes, with many a winding bout
Of linked sweetness long drawn out,
With wanton heed, and giddy cunning,
The melting voice through mazes running;
Untwisting all the chains that tie
The hidden soul of harmony.

That Orpheus self may heave his head
From golden slumber on a bed
Of heaped Elysian flowers, and hear
Such strains as would have won the ear
Of Pluto, to have quite set free
His half regained Eurydice.

These delights, if thou canst give,
Mirth with thee, I mean to live.

Hence, vain deluding Joys,
The brood of Folly without father bred!

How little you bested,
Or fill the fixed mind with all your toys!
Dwell in some idle brain
And fancies fond with gaudy shapes possess
As thick and numberless
As the gay motes that people the sunbeams;
Or likest hovering dreams
The fickle pensioners of Morpheus’ train.

But hail, thou goddess sage and holy,
Hail, divinest Melancholy,
Whose saintly visage is too bright
To hit the sense of human sight.

Come, pensive Nun, devout and pure.
Sober, steadfast and demure,
All in a robe of darkest grain,
Flowring with majestic train.

Come, but keep thy wonted state
With even step and music gait,
With looks commercing with the skies,
Thy rapt soul sitting in thine eyes;
There, held in holy passion still,
Forget thyself to marble,
Till with a sad, leaden, downward cast,
Thou fix them on the earth as fast,
And join with thee calm peace and quiet,
Spare fast, that oft with gods doth diet,
And hears the Muses in a ring
Aye round about Jove’s altar sing.

And the mute silence hist along
‘Less Philomel will deign a song,
saddest plight,
Smoothing the rugged brow of night.
While Cynthia checks her dragon yoke,
Gently o’er the accustomed oak.
Sweet bird, that shunnest the noise of folly,
Most musical, most melancholy,
Thee, chantress, oft the woods among,
I woo to hear thy evensong;
And missing thee I walk unseen
On the dry, smooth-shaven green,
To behold the wand’ring moon,
Ridding near her highest noon.
Like one that has been led astray,
Through the heaven’s wide pathless way,
And oft as if her head she bowed,
Stooping through a fleecy cloud.

Oft on a plat of rising ground,
I heard the far oft curfew sound
Over some wide watered shore,
Swinging slow with sullen roar;
Or, if the air will not permit
Some still removed place will fit,
Where glowing embers thro’ the room,
Teach light to counterfeit a gloom,
Far from all resort of mirth,
Save the cricket on the hearth,
Or the bellman’s drowsy charm
To bless the doors from nightly harm.

Or let my lamp at midnight hour
Be seen in some high, lonely tower,
Where I may oft outwatch the Bear,
With thrice great Hermes, or unsphere
The spirit of Plato, to unfold
What worlds or what vast regions hold
The immortal mind, that hath forsook
Her mansions in this fleshly nook,
And of those demons that are found
In fire, air, flood or underground,
Whose pow’r hath come true consent with planet
Or with element.

And when the sun begins to fling
His flaring beams, me, Goddess, bring
To arched walks of twilight groves,
And shadows brown, that Sylvan loves;

There in close covert by some brook,
Where no profaner eye may look,
Hide me from day’s garish eye,
While the bee with honeyed thigh,
That at her flowery work doth sing,
And the waters murmuring,
With such consort as they keep,
Entice the dewy-feathered Sleep.

And let some strange mysterious dream
Wave at his wings, in aery stream
Of lively portraiture displayed,
Softly on mine eyelids laid.

And as I wake, sweet music breathe
Above, about, or underneath
Sent by some Spirit to mortals good,
Or the unseen Genius of the wood.

But let my due feet never fail
To walk the studious cloister’s pale,
And love the high embowed roof,
With antic pillars massy proof,
And storied windows richly dight,
Castling a dimreligious light.

But let my due feet never fail
To tread the studious cloister’s pale,
And love the high embowed roof,
With antic pillars massy proof,
And storied windows richly dight,
Castling a dimreligious light.

There let the pealing organ blow,
To the full voiced quire below,
In service high and anthems clear,
As may with sweetness through mine ear
Dissolve me into ecstasies,
And bring all heaven before mine eyes.