Piece of the Week 84: The Lost One (I seek her in the shady grove)

When I was growing up, the ‘song recital’ was a staple of music societies and concert halls up and down the country – a singer and piano accompanist would hold the audience in their hands with a carefully selected programme, perhaps beginning with something baroque, then moving through the nineteenth century Austro-German classics to the still-burgeoning English lyric tradition of Vaughan Williams, Howells, Finzi, Gurney, etc. and perhaps ending with a few folk-song arrangements by Britten to send the audience out on a high note!

This phenomenon is less to be found today, and there is less demand for pastoral lyricism than there was – but just occasionally, over the years, I have reflected on and contributed in my own way to that tradition. The piece that I’d like to share with you today is unpublished (though I can supply copies on request) and is a setting of a love poem by the ‘nature poet’ John Clare (shown here in the portrait by William Hilton). I wrote it for an amateur singer friend, for his seventieth birthday concert some years ago, and he chose the poem for me.

Here’s John Clare’s somewhat bittersweet poem, ‘The Lost One’:

I seek her in the shady grove,
And by the silent stream;
I seek her where my fancies rove,
In many a happy dream;
I seek her where I find her not,
In Spring and Summer weather:
My thoughts paint many a happy spot,
But we ne’er meet together.

The trees and bushes speak my choice,
And in the Summer shower
I often hear her pleasant voice,
In many a silent hour:
I see her in the Summer brook,
In blossoms sweet and fair;
In every pleasant place I look
My fancy paints her there.

The wind blows through the forest trees,
And cheers the pleasant day;
There her sweet voice is sure to be
To lull my cares away.
The very hedges find a voice,
So does the gurgling rill;
But still the object of my choice
Is lost and absent still.

And here’s my setting of it, beautifully performed by Gordon Pullin and Roger Fischer