The Ballad of the Harp Weaver (Barbara Rosen)

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• (Posted 2020-01-01)  CPDL #56470:         

Editor: John Hetland (submitted 2020-01-01).   Score information: Letter, 7 pages, 580 kB   Copyright: CPDL

Edition notes:

General Information

Title: The Ballad of the Harp Weaver
Composer: Barbara Rosen
Lyricist: Edna St. Vincent Millay^{create page}

Number of voices: 4vv   Voicing: SATB
Genre: Secular, Art song

Language: English
Instruments: A cappella

Composed: 2005
Description: Selected verses from "The Ballad of the Harp Weaver" by Edna St. Vincent Millay

Original text

English text

Men say the winter was bad that year
Fuel was scarce and food was dear.
A wind with a wolf's head howled about our door
And we burned up the chairs and sat upon the floor
All that was left us was a chair we couldn't break
And a harp with a woman's head nobody would take
for song or pity sake

In the deep night I felt my mother rise
And stare down upon me with love in her eyes
I saw my mother sitting on the one good chair
A light falling on her from I couldn't tell where
Looking nineteen and not a day older
And the harp with a woman's head leaned against her shoulder.

Her thin fingers moving in the thin tall strings
Were weave, weave, weaving wonderful things.
Many bright threads from where I couldn't see
Were running through the harp strings rapidly.

She sang as she worked and the harp strings spoke;
her voice never faltered and the thread never broke.
And when I awoke, there sat my mother
With the harp against her shoulder
looking nineteen and not a day older.

A smile about her lips and a light about her head
And her hands in the harp strings frozen dead
And piled up beside her, toppling to the skies
Were the clothes of a king's son just my size.