Sing, sweet harp - Stanford, Charles Villiers

"OLD IRISH AIR<br> Commissioned by the Irish Choral Society of Chicago, this Irish folksong setting was never published in the UK and was unknown to scholars for over a century."

⌛ Period → Late Romantic

◈ Genre / Form Folksongs

♬ Voicing → SATB

◆ Difficulty

Intermediate (Grade 4-5)

¶ Language → English

Parts 4

Instruments A cappella

Pages 8

CPDL # 79567

Editor David Anderson

Posted 2024-03-16

License Personal

¶Lyrics / Text

Sing, sweet Harp, oh sing to me Some song of ancient days, Whose sounds, in this sad memory, Long-buried dreams shall raise;— Some lay that tells of vanish’d fame, Whose light once round us shone; Of noble pride, now turn’d to shame, And hopes for ever gone.— Sing, sad Harp, thus sing to me; Alike our doom is cast, Both lost to all but memory, We live but in the past. How mournfully the midnight air Among thy chords doth sigh, As if it sought some echo there Of voices long gone by;— Of chieftains, now forgot, who seem’d The foremost then in fame; Of Bards who, once immortal deem’d, Now sleep without a name.— In vain, sad Harp, the midnight air Among thy chords doth sigh; In vain it seeks an echo there Of voices long gone by. Could’st thou but call those spirits round, Who once, in bower and hall, Sate listening to thy magic sound, Now mute and mouldering all;— But, no; they would but wake to weep Their children’s slavery; Then leave them in their dreamless sleep, The dead, at least, are free!— Hush, hush, sad Harp, that dreary tone, That knell of Freedom’s day; Or, listening to its death-like moan, Let me, too, die away.

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