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Neutral Tones : Song Settings of the Poetry of Thomas Hardy

by Gordon Thompson

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1.
The Voice 04:17
Woman much missed, how you call to me, call to me, Saying that now you are not as you were When you had changed from the one who was all to me, But as at first, when our day was fair. Can it be you that I hear? Let me view you, then, Standing as when I drew near to the town Where you would wait for me: yes, as I knew you then, Even to the original air-blue gown! Or is it only the breeze, in its listlessness Travelling across the wet mead to me here, You being ever dissolved to wan wistlessness, Heard no more again far or near? Thus I; faltering forward Leaves around me falling, Wind oozing thin through the thorn from norward And the woman calling.
2.
The Oxen 02:23
Christmas Eve, and twelve of the clock. “Now they are all on their knees,” An elder said as we sat in a flock By the embers in hearthside ease. We pictured the meek mild creatures where They dwelt in their strawy pen, Nor did it occur to one of us there To doubt they were kneeling then. So fair a fancy few would weave In these years! Yet, I feel, If someone said on Christmas Eve, “Come; see the oxen kneel, “In the lonely barton by yonder coomb Our childhood used to know,” I should go with him in the gloom, Hoping it might be so.
3.
When I set out for Lyonnesse, A hundred miles away, The rime was on the spray, And starlight lit my lonesomeness When I set out for Lyonnesse A hundred miles away. What would bechance at Lyonnesse While I should sojourn there No prophet durst declare, Nor did the wisest wizard guess What would bechance at Lyonnesse While I should sojourn there. When I came back from Lyonnesse With magic in my eyes, All marked with mute surmise My radiance rare and fathomless, When I came back from Lyonnesse With magic in my eyes!
4.
Only a man harrowing clods In a slow and silent walk, With an old horse that stumbles and nods, Half asleep as they stalk. Only thin smoke without flame, From the heaps of couch grass. This will go onward the same, Though dynasties pass. Yonder a maid and her wight Come whispering by. Wars annals will cloud into night, Ere their story die.
5.
We stood by a pond that winter day, And the sun was white, as though chidden of God, And a few leaves lay on the starving sod; – They had fallen from an ash, and were gray. Your eyes on me were as eyes that rove Over tedious riddles of years ago; And some words played between us to and fro On which lost the more by our love. The smile on your mouth was the deadest thing Alive enough to have strength to die; And a grin of bitterness swept thereby Like an ominous bird a-wing…. Since then, keen lessons that love deceives, And wrings with wrong, have shaped to me Your face, and the God curst sun, and a tree, And a pond edged with grayish leaves.
6.
Something tapped on the pane of my room When there was never a trace Of wind or rain, and I saw in the gloom My weary Belovèd's face. "O I am tired of waiting," she said, "Night, morn, noon, afternoon; So cold it is in my lonely bed, And I thought you would join me soon!" I rose and neared the window-glass, But vanished thence had she: Only a pallid moth, alas, Tapped at the pane for me. bridge (adapted from The Going) Why do you make me leave the house And think for a breath it’s you I see? At the end of the aisle of crimson trees Where often in the twilight you would be.
7.
I leant upon a coppice gate, When Frost was spectre-gray, And Winter's dregs made desolate The weakening eye of day. The tangled bine-stems scored the sky Like strings of broken lyres, And all mankind that haunted nigh Had sought their household fires. The land's sharp features seemed to me The Century's corpse outleant, Its crypt the cloudy canopy, The wind its death-lament. The ancient pulse of germ and birth Was shrunken hard and dry, And every spirit upon earth Seemed fervorless as I. At once a voice arose among The bleak twigs overhead, In a full-hearted evensong Of joy illimited. An aged thrush, frail, gaunt and small, With blast-beruffled plume, Had chosen thus to fling his soul Upon the growing gloom. So little cause for carolings Of such ecstatic sound Was written on terrestrial things Afar or nigh around, That I could think there trembled through His happy good-night air Some blessed Hope, whereof he knew, And I was unaware.
8.
The Drummer 03:16
They throw in Drummer Hodge, to rest Uncoffined—just as found: His landmark is a kopje-crest That breaks the veldt around; And foreign constellations west Each night above his mound. Young Hodge the Drummer never knew— Fresh from his Wessex home— The meaning of the broad Karoo, The Bush, the dusty loam, And why uprose to nightly view Strange stars amid the gloam. Yet portion of that unknown plain Will Hodge for ever be; His homely Northern breast and brain Grow up a Southern tree, And strange-eyed constellations reign His stars eternally.
9.
Close up the casement, draw the blind, Shut out that stealing moon, She wears too much the guise she wore Before our lutes were strewn With years-deep dust, and names we read On a white stone were hewn. Step not forth on the dew-dashed lawn To view the Lady's Chair, Immense Orion's glittering form, The Less and Greater Bear: Stay in; to such sights we were drawn When faded ones were fair. (chorus) Brush not the bough for midnight scents That come forth lingeringly, And wake the same sweet sentiments They breathed to you and me When living seemed a laugh, and love All it was said to be. Within the common lamp-lit room Prison my eyes and thought; Let dingy details crudely loom, Mechanic speech be wrought: Too fragrant was Life's early bloom, Too tart the fruit it brought!
10.
Afterwards 03:49
When the Present has latched its postern [the old tradesman's door] behind my tremulous stay, And the May month flaps its glad green leaves like wings, Delicate-filmed as new-spun silk, will the neighbours say, "He was a man who used to notice such things"? If it be in the dusk when, like an eyelid's soundless blink, The dewfall-hawk comes crossing the shades to alight Upon the wind-warped upland thorn, a gazer may think, "To him this must have been a familiar sight." If I pass during some nocturnal blackness, mothy and warm, When the hedgehog travels furtively over the lawn, One may say, "He strove that such innocent creatures should come to no harm, But he could do little for them; and now he is gone." If, when hearing that I have been stilled at last, they stand at the door, Watching the full-starred heavens that winter sees, Will this thought rise on those who will meet my face no more, "He was one who had an eye for such mysteries"? And will any say when my bell of quittance is heard in the gloom, And a crossing breeze cuts a pause in its outrollings, Till they rise again, as they were a new bell's boom, "He hears it not now, but used to notice such things?"
11.
Dora’s gone to Ireland Through the sleet and snow; Promptly she has gone there In a ship, although Why she’s gone to Ireland Dora does not know. That was where, yea, Ireland, Dora wished to be: When she felt, in lone times, Shoots of misery, Often there, in Ireland, Dora wished to be. Hence she’s gone to Ireland, Since she meant to go, Through the drift and darkness Onward labouring, though That she’s gone to Ireland Dora does not know.

about

Song settings of the poetry of Thomas Hardy by Gordon Thompson. The idea was to set a range of Thomas Hardy's poetry to contemporary music. Many thanks to TK Bollinger (recording and production) for the long journey. Thanks also to Mark T3 Hughes for production on some of the tracks.

credits

released February 9, 2020

Gordon Thompson - music, production, resonator guitar, electric guitar, electric bass, piano, harmonica, Black Diamond Cigar Box guitar, vocal.
Lauren Bell - flute.
Lara Thompson - vocal (The Drummer) and backing vocal (The Voice).
Thomas Kress (aka TK Bollinger) - recording, mixing.
Mark Hughes - recording, mixing, piano.
Martin Pullan - mastering all tracks except 'Lyonesse'

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Gordon Thompson Melbourne, Australia

Gordon lives in Melbourne and is the publisher at Clouds of Magellan Press, and publisher of 'Bent Street: Australian LGBTIQA+ Arts, Writing & Ideas'. He has four children (at last count) with Petrina, also one dog (Shep) and 6 goldfish (Papa Jo and the Sylvesters) ... more

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