The Witches' Wood (Charles Hubert Hastings Parry)

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• CPDL #16766: Sibelius 4

Editor: John Henry Fowler (submitted 2008-05-02).   Score information: A4, 5 pages, 84 kbytes   Copyright: CPDL

Edition notes: File Sizes: PDF: 84 KB, MIDI: 14 KB, Sib4: 48 KB.

General Information

Title: The Witches' Wood
Composer: Charles Hubert Hastings Parry
Lyricist: Mary E. Coleridge

Number of voices: 1v   Voicing: Solo Tenor
Genre: Secular, Art song

Language: English
Instruments: Piano
Published: 1909

Description: English Lyrics Set 9 - No. 3

External websites:

Original text and translations

English text

There was a wood, a witches' wood,

All the trees therein were pale;

They bore no branches green and good

But as it were a gray nun's veil.

They talked and chattered in the wind

From morning dawn to set of sun,

Like men and women that have sinned,

Whose thousand evil tongues are one.

Their roots were like the hands of men,

Grown hard and brown with clutching gold,

Their foliage women's tresses

When the hair is withered, thin and old.

There never did a sweet bird sing.

For happy love about his nest.

The clustered bats on evil wing

Each hollow trunk and bough possessed.

And in the midst a pool there lay

Of water white, as thou' a scare

Had frightened off the eye of day

And kept the Moon reflected there.