Musica Beatta - Songs of Springtime... a Tree Poem

by Roy Fitzgerald
(Perth, Western Australia, AUSTRALIA)

Just returned from Oxford, United Kingdom and heard this fabulous group / choir sing "My Love's an Arbutus" by C.V.Stanford

Title: My Love's an Arbutus
Composer: Charles Villiers Stanford
Lyricist: Alfred Perceval Graves

Directed by Peter Hanke and Paul Hedley
www.beata.org.uk

My love's an arbutus
By the borders of Lene,
So slender and shapely
In her girdle of green.
And I measure the pleasure
Of her eyes' sapphire sheen
By the blue skies that sparkle
Through the soft branching screen.


But though ruddy the berry
And snowy the flower
That brighten together
The arbutus bower,
Perfuming and blooming
Through sunshine and shower,
Give me her bright lips
And her laugh's pearly dower.


Alas, fruit and blossom
Shall lie dead on the lea,
And Time's jealous fingers
Dim your young charms, Machree.
But unranging, unchanging,
You'll still cling to me,
Like the evergreen leaf
To the arbutus tree.