My Garden for Soprano and Orchestra

My Garden is three evocative settings for soprano and orchestra on poems by Christina Rossetti.

There is a budding morrow in midnight (c. 1887)

Wintry boughs against a wintry sky;
Yet the sky is partly blue
And the clouds are partly bright: –
Who can tell but sap is mounting high
Out of sight,
Ready to burst through?

Winter is the mother-nurse of Spring,
Lovely for her daughter’s sake,
Not unlovely for her own:
For a future buds in everything;
Grown, or blown,
Or about to break.

Spring Quiet (1847)

Gone were but the Winter,
Come were but the Spring,
I would go to a covert
Where the birds sing;

Where in the whitethorn
Singeth a thrush,
And a robin sings
In the holly-bush.

Full of fresh scents
Are the budding boughs
Arching high over
A cool green house:

Full of sweet scents
And whispering air
Which sayeth softly:
“We spread no snare;

“Here dwell in safety,
Here dwell alone,
With a clear stream
And a mossy stone.
“Here the sun shineth
Most shadily;
Here is heard an echo
Of the far sea,
Tho’ far off it be.”

Another Spring (1857)

If I might see another Spring
I’d not plant summer flowers and wait:
I’d have my crocuses at once,
My leafless pink mezereons,
My chill-veined snowdrops, choicer yet
My white or azure violet,
Leaf-nested primrose; anything
To blow at once, not late.

If I might see another Spring
I’d listen to the daylight birds
That build their nests and pair and sing,
Nor wait for mateless nightingale;
I’d listen to the lusty herds,
The ewes with lambs as white as snow,
I’d find out music in the hail
And all the winds that blow.

If I might see another Spring –
Oh stinging comment on my past
That all my past results in “if” –
If I might see another Spring
I’d laugh today, today is brief;
I would not wait for anything:
I’d use today that cannot last,
Be glad today and sing.