Songs

Love's Minstrels

by Ralph Vaughan Williams From The House of Life (1903)

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Text

Love's Minstrels
English source: Dante Gabriel Rossetti

One flame-winged brought a white-winged harp-player
Even where my lady and I lay all alone;
Saying: ‘Behold this minstrel is unknown;
Bid him depart, for I am minstrel here:
Only my songs are to love's dear ones dear.’
Then said I ‘Through thine hautboy's rapturous tone
Unto my lady still this harp makes moan,
And still she deems the cadence deep and clear.’
Then said my lady: ‘Thou art passion of Love,
And this Love's worship: both he plights to me.
Thy mastering music walks the sunlit sea:
But where wan water trembles in the grove,
And the wan moon is all the light thereof,
This harp still makes my name its voluntary.’

Composer

Ralph Vaughan Williams

Ralph Vaughan Williams was an English composer. Over sixty years, he composed operas, ballets, chamber music, vocal pieces and orchestral compositions. He was strongly influenced by Tudor music and English folk-song. Information from Wikipedia.…

Poet

Dante Gabriel Rossetti

Dante Gabriel Rossetti was a British poet, illustrator, painter and translator. He founded the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood in 1848 with William Holman Hunt and John Everett Millais. Read more here.

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