Category: Music

Going And Staying

by russellclarkenz, posted in Music

One of my favourite poems put into song by one of my favourite musical ensembles.

Doubleplus good.

This short poem by Hardy ends, unusually for him, on a note of optimism—or at least an acceptance that adverse destiny is moderated by time and that what goes around comes around. The tune was written on a plane somewhere over the USA during an early Brass Monkey tour. Later regulation was necessary to fit it to the uncommon scansion.

The moving sun-shapes on the spray,
The sparkles where the brook was flowing,
Pink faces, plightings, moonlit May,
These were the things we wished would stay;
    But they were going.

Seasons of blankness as of snow,
The silent bleed of a world decaying,
The moan of multitudes in woe,
These were the things we wished would go;
    But they were staying.

Then we looked closelier at time,
And saw his ghostly arms revolving
To sweet off woeful things with prime,
Things sinister with things sublime
    Alike dissolving.