Poem o' the Week: The Turtle Dove ( English Folk Song)

The Turtle Dove

Fare you well, my dear, I must be gone,
And leave you for a while;
If I roam away I'll come back again,
Though I roam ten thousand miles, my dear,
Though I roam ten thousand miles.

So fair thou art, my bonny lass,
So deep in love am I;
But I never will prove false to the bonny lass I love,
Till the stars fall from the sky, my dear,
Till the stars fall from the sky.

The sea will never run dry, my dear,
Nor the rocks melt with the sun,
But I never will prove false to the bonny lass I love,
Till all these things be done, my dear,
Till all these things be done.

O yonder doth sit that little turtle dove,
He doth sit on yonder high tree,
A-making a moan for the loss of his love,
As I will do for thee, my dear,
As I will do for thee.


Bryn Terfel Sings "The Turtle Dove", Arr. R Vaugh Williams
This is from the Last Night of The Proms. I wish the some of the Proms, especially the Last Night were broadcast in the USA.

Poem o' the Week: Silent Noon by D.G. Rossetti

Silent Noon

by Dante Gabriel Rossetti (1828–1882)

YOUR hands lie open in the long, fresh grass,—
The finger-points look through like rosy blooms:
Your eyes smile peace. The pasture gleams and glooms
’Neath billowing skies that scatter and amass.
All round our nest, far as the eye can pass, 
Are golden kingcup-fields with silver edge
Where the cow-parsley skirts the hawthorn hedge.
’Tis visible silence, still as the hour-glass.
Deep in the sun-searched growths the dragon-fly
Hangs like a blue thread loosened from the sky,—
So this wing’d hour is dropped to us from above.
Oh! clasp we to our hearts, for deathless dower,
This close-companioned inarticulate hour
When twofold silence was the song of love.

Ian Bostridge Sings "Silent Noon" Comp. Ralph Vaugh Williams