The Shepherd’s anthem (Charles Villiers Stanford)
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- Editor: David Anderson (submitted 2024-03-12). Score information: Letter, 12 pages, 621 kB Copyright: Personal
- Edition notes:
General Information
Title: The Shepherd’s anthem
Composer: Charles Villiers Stanford
Lyricist: Michael Drayton
Number of voices: 4vv Voicing: SATB
Genre: Secular, Partsong
Language: English
Instruments: A cappella
First published: 1897 Boosey & Co.
Description: Six Elizabethan Pastorals [set 3], Opus 67, No. 2
External websites:
Original text and translations
English text
Near to a bank with roses set about,
Where pretty turtles joining bill to bill,
And gentle springs steal softly murmuring out,
Washing the foot of pleasure’s sacred hill.
There little Love sore wounded lies,
His bow and arrows broken,
Bedew’d with tears from Venus’ eyes;
Oh, that it should be spoken!
Bear him my heart, slain with her scornful eye,
Where sticks the arrow that poor hart did kill,
With whose sharp pile, yet will him ere he die,
About my heart to write his latest will.
And bid him send it back to me,
At instant of his dying,
That cruel, cruel she may see,
My faith and her denying.
His hearse shall be a mournful cypress shade,
And for a chantry Philomel’s sweet lay;
Where prayer shall continually be made
By pilgrim lovers passing by that way,
With nymphs’ and shepherds’ yearly moan,
His timeless death beweeping;
And telling that my heart alone
Hath his last will in keeping.