Overview
Every once in a while one can find a volume of poetry that renders such vivid images in the mind’s eye… Golden Stars was the first (of now many) Adela Florence Nicolson poems that seem to paint pictures in my head—in this case, a deep, dark but still blue sky with twinkling golden points of light, and an image of a godly hand stringing these golden beads onto a necklace. Or a soft, green bed of grass beneath that sky.
This setting owes its birth to Seattle composer and teacher Bern Herbolsheimer, who challenged me to write a piece with neither meter nor even sense of meter. That freedom from meter is used to tell this story in a very fluid way that give the performers a great deal of latitude to make the story theirs.
Other choral settings of Nicolson’s poetry include Golden Stars (F. 150), Wistful Wind (F. 152), The Plains (F. 154), Lost Delight (F. 157), Famine Song (F. 164), and Reminiscence (F. 166).
The Poem
I made several small changes to the original poem—most to increase its lyricism. But in the last stanza, I couldn’t help but translate the narrator’s voice from the medium of the spoken word (“But what is the use of my speech, since I know of no works to recall you?”) to that of music (“But what use is song, since I know neither tune nor words to recall you?”)–a more natural fit for the setting.
Golden Stars
Golden Stars—
I would have taken golden stars from the sky for your necklace.
Petals from every rose I would have shaken for your rest.But short sweet grass sufficed;
You took no heed of such trifles as gold.
But short sweet grass sufficed;
And you took no heed of such trifles as a necklace:
Short sweet grass sufficed for your slumber.There is an hour at twilight too heavy with memory.
There is a flower that I fear, for your hair had its fragrance.Youth, I would have squandered for your love—
Before you wandered, careless, away from my pointless passion.O, what use!
But what use is song, since I know neither tune nor words to recall you?
I only pray that Time may teach you your Cruelty, and me, Forgetfulness.—Adela Florence Nicolson (1865-1904), revisions copyright © 2008 by Fraley Music, Inc.
To the Unattainable: Lament of Mahomed Akram
I would have taken Golden Stars from the sky for your necklace,
I would have shaken rose-leaves for your rest from all the rose-trees.But you had no need; the short sweet grass sufficed for your slumber,
And you took no heed of such trifles as gold or a necklace.There is an hour, at twilight, too heavy with memory.
There is a flower that I fear, for your hair had its fragrance.I would have squandered Youth for you, and its hope and its promise,
Before you wandered, careless, away from the useless passion.But what is the use of my speech, since I know of no words to recall you?
I am praying that Time may teach, you, your Cruelty, me, Forgetfulness.—Adela Florence Nicolson (1865-1904) published in India’s Love Lyrics (1902)
Listen to Golden Stars while viewing the perusal score:
.
