This week, I’m posting some of my settings of Gerald Manley Hopkins’ poems. I’ve always been a fan since T.S. Eliot recommended him to me. I think we should also encourage parents to bring back “Manley” as a middle name, but we should spell it “manly”. We could have Wolfgang Manly Puck or Mike Manly Judge. The first song in the set is called Inversnaid and is about a waterfall in Scotland. I especially adore the text, “Long live the weeds and the wilderness yet”. The full text is below the video which has a picture of the Inversnaid Falls at Loch Lomond. The soprano is the fabulous Eugenia Garrity singing at a regional CMS convention. You can check out her website here. She’s amazing.
| THIS darksome burn, horseback brown, | |
| His rollrock highroad roaring down, | |
| In coop and in comb the fleece of his foam | |
| Flutes and low to the lake falls home. | |
| A windpuff-bonnet of fáwn-fróth | 5 |
| Turns and twindles over the broth | |
| Of a pool so pitchblack, féll-frówning, | |
| It rounds and rounds Despair to drowning. | |
| Degged with dew, dappled with dew | |
| Are the groins of the braes that the brook treads through, | 10 |
| Wiry heathpacks, flitches of fern, | |
| And the beadbonny ash that sits over the burn. | |
| What would the world be, once bereft | |
| Of wet and of wildness? Let them be left, | |
| O let them be left, wildness and wet; | 15 |
| Long live the weeds and the wilderness yet. |
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