Now playing - Dylan Thomas settings
And death shall have no dominion.
Dead mean naked they shall be one
With the man in the wind and the west moon;
When their bones are picked clean and the clean bones gone,
They shall have stars at elbow and foot;
Though they go mad they shall be sane,
Though they sink through the sea they shall rise again;
Though lovers be lost love shall not;
And death shall have no dominion.
I'm listening to a choral setting by Kenneth Jennings of "And death shall have no dominion". It brings a memory of myself at seventeen, reciting this poem in the school verse-speaking competition, I'm sure very badly. The Jennings setting is quite different from my conception of the poem: fast where I read it slowly, quiet where I would be impassioned. A very different reading, but a powerful one (brilliantly performed, it seems to a non-singer like me, by the group Cantus).
Coming up now is Samuel Barber's setting of Hopkins "Heaven-Haven". I stop to listen to it.
Heaven—Haven (A nun takes the veil)
I have desired to go
Where springs not fail,
To fields where flies no sharp and sided hail
And a few lilies blow.
And I have asked to be
Where no storms come,
Where the green swell is in the havens dumb,
And out of the swing of the sea.
Dead mean naked they shall be one
With the man in the wind and the west moon;
When their bones are picked clean and the clean bones gone,
They shall have stars at elbow and foot;
Though they go mad they shall be sane,
Though they sink through the sea they shall rise again;
Though lovers be lost love shall not;
And death shall have no dominion.
I'm listening to a choral setting by Kenneth Jennings of "And death shall have no dominion". It brings a memory of myself at seventeen, reciting this poem in the school verse-speaking competition, I'm sure very badly. The Jennings setting is quite different from my conception of the poem: fast where I read it slowly, quiet where I would be impassioned. A very different reading, but a powerful one (brilliantly performed, it seems to a non-singer like me, by the group Cantus).
Coming up now is Samuel Barber's setting of Hopkins "Heaven-Haven". I stop to listen to it.
Heaven—Haven (A nun takes the veil)
I have desired to go
Where springs not fail,
To fields where flies no sharp and sided hail
And a few lilies blow.
And I have asked to be
Where no storms come,
Where the green swell is in the havens dumb,
And out of the swing of the sea.
posted by Tony at 5:24 PM
2 Comments:
After the first death, there is no other...
Now there's a poem I don't think I've thought of since I was at school. And yet that one line brings back so many ohers. "Never until the mankind making / Bird beast and flower / Fathering and all humbling darkness / Tells with silence the last light breaking..." I know so much of it by heart, from thirty-odd years ago.
Post a Comment
<< Home