SSB a cappella
Lyrics adapted by Frank DiGiacomo from Elizabethan texts.
These ten songs, originally written as a preperformance entertainment for a production of Romeo and Juliet by William Shakespeare, are offered here as a separate song cycle. The singers in the live recordings are William (Bill) Black, Christine Klemperer and Donna Miller.
See the Incidental Music section of the website for additional information.
LYRICS
1. Sweet rose
Lyrics are from The Passionate Pilgrim and are Anonymous,
but incorrectly attributed to William Shakespeare 1599.
Sweet rose, fair flow’r, untimely pluck’d, soon faded,
plucked in the bud and faded in the spring.
Bright orient pearl alack, too timely shaded,
fair creature killed too soon by death’s sharp sting,
like a green plum that hangs upon a tree and falls
through wind before the fall should be.
2. And how should I your true love know
Lyrics from Hamlet by William Shakespeare,
Ophelia’s speech, Act 4, scene 5.
And how should I your true love know from many another one?
Oh, by his cockle hat and staff and by his sandal shoon.
He is gone, my lady, he is dead and gone.
At his head a green grass turf and at his feet a stone.
White is his shroud as mountain snow.
Larded with sweet flowers which bewept to the grave did go
with true love show’rs, alas!
3. Come, sweet love
Lyrics from The Aberdeen Cantus: songs and fancies “apt for voices or viols”, printed by John Forbes 1682.
Come sweet love let sorrow cease.
Banish frowns, leave off dissension.
Love’s war makes the sweetest peace.
Hearts uniting by contention.
Sunshine follows after rain, sorrows ceasing.
This is pleasing!
All proves fair again.
After sorrow cometh joy!
Trust me, prove me, try me, love me.
This will cure annoy!
4. If love make me forsworn
Lyrics adapted by Frank DiGiacomo from Love’s Labour’s Lost
by William Shakespeare, Sir Nathaniel reads Don Armado’s letter
to Jaquenetta, Act 4, scene 2.
If love make me forsworn, how shall I swear to love?
Ah, never faith could hold, if not to beauty vowed!
Though to myself forsworn to thee I’ll faithful prove.
Those thoughts to me were oaks, to thee like osiers bow’d.
Study his bias leaves and makes his book thine eyes,
where all those pleasures live that art would comprehend.
If knowledge be the mark, to know thee shall suffice.
Well learned is that tongue that well can thee commend.
All ignorant that soul that sees thee without wonder
which is to me some praise that I thy parts admire;
thy eye Jove’s lightning bears, thy voice his dreadful thunder
is music and sweet fire;
celestial as thou art, O pardon, love, this wrong
that sings heaven’s praise with such an earthly tongue.
5. Oh mistress mine
Lyrics from Twelfth Night by William Shakespeare.
Speech of Feste, Olivia’s jester, Act 2, scene 3.
O mistress mine, where are you roaming?
O stay and hear! Your true love’s coming!
That can sing both high and low, trip no further pretty sweetling,
journeys end in lovers meeting, ev’ry wise man’s son doth know.
Ah, what is love?
‘Tis not hereafter, present mirth hath present laughter.
What’s to come is still unsure.
In delay there lies no plenty; then come and kiss me,
sweet and twenty, for youth’s a stuff will not endure.
6. Live with me
Lyrics adapted by Frank DiGiacomo from The Passionate Shepherd to His Love by Christopher Marlowe
Live with me and be my love and we will all the pleasures prove,
that hills and valleys, dales and fields, and all the craggy mountains yield.
There will we sit upon the rocks and see the shepherds feed their flocks
by shallow rivers, by whose falls melodious birds sing madrigals.
There will I make thee a bed of roses with a thousand fragrant posies,
a cap of flowers and a kirtle embroidered all with leaves of myrtle,
a belt of straw and ivy buds with coral clasps and amber studs;
and if these pleasures may thee move, then live with me and be my love.
7. As I walked out in yonder dell
Lyrics adapted by Frank DiGiacomo from The Elfin Knight collected
in The English and Scottish Popular Ballads, Volume 5, by Francis James Child.
Note: In former times if a young man asked his intended to make him a shirt, it was tantamount to a proposal of marriage.
As I walked out in yonder dell, I met a fair damsel her name it was Nell.
Let ev’ry rose grow merry in time.
I said, “Will you be a true lover of mine?”
Let ev’ry rose grow merry in time.
I want you to make me a cambric shirt, without any seam or needlework
and then you shall be a true love of mine.
Let ev’ry rose grow merry in time.
I want you to wash it on yonder hill.
Where dew never was nor rain never fell
and then you shall be a true love of mine.
Let ev’ry rose grow merry in time.
I want you to dry it on yonder thorn,
Where tree never blossomed since Adam was born,
and then you shall be a true love of mine.
And since you have asked these three questions of me
now I will ask as many of thee.
I want you to buy me an acre of land,
Let ev’ry rose grow merry in time.
between the salt sea and the sea land.
and then you shall be a true love of mine.
I want you to plow it with an oxes horn,
and plant it all over with a kernel of corn.
I want you to thresh it all out with the sting of an adder.
Let ev’ry rose grow merry in time.
I want you to hoe it with a peacock’s feather,
and then I shall be a true lover of thine!
8. None other will I love
Lyrics are Anonymous.
None other will I love but her I have loved with tender heart.
I have given her my love and never will I part from her in snow or ice.
Oh God, what shall I say to her? The beauty who has my heart and my love.
For her I am in great sadness. I have no rest night or day
when I have gazed at her dainty mouth her color so fresh.
No more than one could number the stars when shining most brightly
could one imagine, or conceive the great desire I have of seeing you!
Ah! Sweet lady, I lead too hard a life, because of you I am every day in tears,
relieve my great afflction.
Ah!
9. On a day
Lyrics adapted by Frank DiGiacomo from Love’s Labour’s Lost
by William Shakespeare,
Dumaine’s ode to Katherine, Act 4, scene 3.
On a day, alack, a day!
Love whose month is ever May,
spied a blossom passing fair,
playing in the wanton air.
Through the velvet leaves the wind
all unseen can passage find;
that the lover sick to death
wish himself the heaven’s breath.
Air quoth he thy cheeks may blow.
Air, would I might triumph so.
But, alack, my hand is sworn
ne’er to pluck thee from thy thorn,
Vow, alack, for youth unmeet,
youth so apt to pluck a sweet.
Do not call it sin in me
that I am forsworn for thee!
Thou for whom Jove would swear
Juno but an Ethiope were;
and deny himself, for Jove
turning mortal for thy love.
10. Love me little, love me long
Lyrics are Anonymous.
Love me little, love me long,
is the burden of my song;
love that is too hot and strong,
burneth soon to waste.
Still, I would not have thee cold,
nor too backward, nor too bold.
Love that lasteth till ‘tis old
fadeth not in haste.
Winter’s cold or summer’s heat;
Autumn’s tempests on it beat,
it can never know defeat;
never can rebel.
Such the love that I would gain,
such love I tell thee plain,
thou must give or woo in vain,
so to thee farewell, farewell.