My gentle harp (Charles Villiers Stanford)

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• (Posted 2024-03-07)  CPDL #79429:     

Editor: David Anderson (submitted 2024-03-07).   Score information: Letter, 8 pages, 528 kB   Copyright: Personal

Edition notes:

General Information

Title: My gentle harp
Composer: Charles Villiers Stanford
Lyricist: Thomas Moore
Number of voices: 4vv   Voicing: SATB
Genre: Secular, Partsong, Folksong

Language: English
Instruments: A cappella

First published: 1922 J. Curwen & Sons
Description: Six Irish Airs (6)

AIR: THE CAOINE OR DIRGE

Original text and translations

English text

My gentle harp once more I waken
The sweetness of thy slumbering strain;
In tears our last farewell was taken,
And now in tears we meet again.
No light of joy hath o’er thee broken,
But like those harps whose heavenly skill,
Of slavery, dark as thine, hath spoken,
Thou hangest upon the willows still.

Then who can ask for notes of pleasure,
My drooping harp! from chords like Thine!
Alas, the lark’s gay morning measure
As ill would suit the swan’s decline!
Or how shall I, who love, who bless thee,
Invoke thy breath for freedom’s strains,
When even the wreaths in which I dress thee,
Are sadly mixed, half flowers, half chains.

But come, if yet thy frame can borrow
One breath of joy, oh, breathe for me.
And show the world, in chains and sorrow,
How sweet thy music still can be;
How gaily, even ’mid gloom surrounding,
Thou yet canst wake at pleasure’s thrill,
like Memnon’s broken image sounding
’Mid desolation tuneful still.