Located in the UK
Located in the USA
Located in Europe
- Justin Connolly
Verse, Op. 7b (1969)
- Novello & Co Ltd (World)
Programme Note
This diptych is a companion piece to my earlier Prose, for unaccompanied chorus, and uses a similar point of departure, a poem by Drummond of Hawthornden. Here the text emphasises not so much man's inhumanity to man as the inevitable terrors of a perpetually threatened existence. In Prose the words and music deal with man's attempt to come to terms with his impermanence, but Verse articulates the basic antithesis between the grim conditions of existence and a sense of wonder at its continued survival. After the description of life as a wild hunt, with man as the quarry, the new-born, whether of body or soul, is made to muse upon the mystery of a life which, returning to the void, seems also to be created from it.
© Justin Connolly
The world a hunting is,
The prey poor man,
The Nimrod fierce is death.
His speedy greyhounds are
Lust, sickness, envy, care,
Strife that ne'er falls amiss,
With all those ills which haunt us
While we breathe.
Now if by chance we fly
Of these the eager chase,
Old age with stealing pace
Casts up his nets,
and there we panting die.
William Drummond of Hawthornden (1585-1649)
When silent I so many thousand thousand years
Beneath the dust did in a chaos lie,
How could I smiles or tears
Or lips or hands or eyes or ears perceive?
I that so long
Was nothing from eternity
Did little think such joys as ears and tongue
To celebrate or see,
Such sounds to hear, such hands to feel, such feet
Such eyes and objects on the ground to meet.
From dust I rise,
And out of nothing now awake,
These brighter regions that salute my eyes
A gift I take,
The earth, the seas, the light, the lofty skies
The sun and stars are mine if these I prize.
A stranger here
Strange things doth meet strange glory see
Strange treasures lodged in this fair world appear.
Strange, all, and new to me;
But that they mine should be who nothing was,
That strangest is of all; yet brought to pass.
Thomas Traherne (1637-74)
© Justin Connolly
The world a hunting is,
The prey poor man,
The Nimrod fierce is death.
His speedy greyhounds are
Lust, sickness, envy, care,
Strife that ne'er falls amiss,
With all those ills which haunt us
While we breathe.
Now if by chance we fly
Of these the eager chase,
Old age with stealing pace
Casts up his nets,
and there we panting die.
William Drummond of Hawthornden (1585-1649)
When silent I so many thousand thousand years
Beneath the dust did in a chaos lie,
How could I smiles or tears
Or lips or hands or eyes or ears perceive?
I that so long
Was nothing from eternity
Did little think such joys as ears and tongue
To celebrate or see,
Such sounds to hear, such hands to feel, such feet
Such eyes and objects on the ground to meet.
From dust I rise,
And out of nothing now awake,
These brighter regions that salute my eyes
A gift I take,
The earth, the seas, the light, the lofty skies
The sun and stars are mine if these I prize.
A stranger here
Strange things doth meet strange glory see
Strange treasures lodged in this fair world appear.
Strange, all, and new to me;
But that they mine should be who nothing was,
That strangest is of all; yet brought to pass.
Thomas Traherne (1637-74)