by Gordon Bottomley (1874 - 1948)
New Year's Eve, 1913
Language: English
O, Cartmel bells ring soft to-night, And Cartmel bells ring clear, But I lie far away to-night, Listening with my dear; Listening in a frosty land Where all the bells are still And the small-windowed bell-towers stand Dark under heath and hill. I thought that, with each dying year, As long as life should last The bells of Cartmel I should hear Ring out an aged past: The plunging, mingling sounds increase Darkness's depth and height, The hollow valley gains more peace And ancientness to-night: The loveliness, the fruitfulness, The power of life lived there Return, revive, more closely press Upon that midnight air. But many deaths have place in men Before they come to die; Joys must be used and spent, and then Abandoned and passed by. Earth is not ours; no cherished space Can hold us from life's flow, That bears us thither and thence by ways We knew not we should go. O, Cartmel bells ring loud, ring clear, Through midnight deep and hoar, A year new-born, and I shall hear The Cartmel bells no more.
Authorship:
- by Gordon Bottomley (1874 - 1948), "New Year's Eve, 1913", appears in Poems of Thirty Years, first published 1925 [author's text checked 1 time against a primary source]
Musical settings (art songs, Lieder, mélodies, (etc.), choral pieces, and other vocal works set to this text), listed by composer (not necessarily exhaustive):
- by John Patrick Somers-Cocks (1907 - 1995), "New Year's Eve, 1913", published 1933 [ soprano and piano ] [sung text not yet checked]
Researcher for this text: Emily Ezust [Administrator]
This text was added to the website: 2021-01-27
Line count: 32
Word count: 179