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Poems by Sir Walter Ralegh (Raleigh) set to music by Budleigh Salterton composer.

Nicholas Marshall’s cantata Even Such is Time was written in 1980 and first performed in the 1980 Ashburton Festival by Ian Caddy (baritone), with the Festival Chorus and Orchestra, conducted by the composer.

It was performed again in the 2009 Budleigh Salterton Festival with Jeremy Huw Williams (baritone) and the Festival Chorus and Orchestra, conducted by Nicholas Marshall, who was living locally in Ting Tong.

Even Such is Time, for baritone soloist, chorus and chamber orchestra, outlines the life of Sir Walter Ralegh as he looks back on the eve of his execution, mainly through settings of his own verse.

The score calls for single wind (flute, oboe d’amore, clarinet, bassoon and horn), timpani, harp and strings, with baritone and mixed chorus.

The cantata

The poems by Ralegh are as follows:

       The mind in searching causes is never quiet
       Until it comes to God
       And the will is never satisfied with any goodness
       Until it comes to the immortal goodness.

       Those eyes that hold the hand of every heart,
       Those hands that hold the heart of every eye,
       That wit that goes beyond all nature’s art,
       That sense too deep for wisdom to descry,
       That eye, that hand, that wit, that heavenly sense,
       All these doth show my mistress’ excellence.

       O eyes that pierce into the purest heart,
       O hands that hold the highest hearts in thrall,
       O wit that weighs the depth of all desart,
       O sense that shows the secret sweet of all,
       The heaven of heavens with heavenly power preserve thee,
       Love but thyself, and give me leave to serve thee.

       Those eyes which set my fancy on a fire,
       Those crisped hairs which hold my heart in chains,
       Those dainty hands which conquer’d my desire,
       That wit which of my thoughts doth hold the reins!

       Those eyes for clearness do the stars surpass,
       Those hairs obscure the brightness of the sun,
       Those hands more white than ever ivory was,
       That wit even to the skies hath glory won.

        O eyes that pierce our hearts without remorse!
       O hairs of right that wear a royal crown!
       O hands that conquer more than Caesar’s force!
       O wit that turns huge kingdoms upside down!

       Then Love be judge, what heart may thee withstand,
       Such eyes, such hair, such wit, and such a hand!

       Prais’d be Diana’s fair and harmless light,
       Prais’d be the dews wherewith she moists the ground;
       Prais’d be her beams, the glory of the night,
       Prais’d be her power, by which all powers abound.

       Prais’d be her nymphs, with whom she decks the woods,
       Prais’d be her knights, in whom true honour lives,
       Prais’d be that force by which she moves the floods,
       Let that Diana shine which all these gives,

       In heaven queen she is among the spheres,
       In earth she mistress-like makes all things pure,
       Eternity in her oft change she bears,
       She beauty is, by her the fair endure.

       Time wears her not, she doth his chariot guide,
       Mortality below her orb is placed,
       By her the virtue of the stars down glide,
       In her is virtue’s perfect image cast.

       A knowledge pure it is her worth to know.
       With Circus let them dwell that think not so.

       The heaven, the earth, and all the liquid main,
       The moon’s bright globe and stars titanian,
       A spirit within maintains: and their whole mass
       A mind, which through each part infus’d doth pass,
       Fashions and works and wholly doth transpierce
       All this great body of the universe.

       Cold walls to you I speak but you are senseless;
       Then unto whom shall I unfold my wrong,
       Cast down my tears or hold up folded hands?
 
       Oh had truth power the guiltless could not fall,
       Malice win glory, or revenge triumph;
       But truth alone cannot encounter all.

       All love and all desert of former times
       Malice has covered from my sovereign’s eyes,
       And largely laid abroad supposed crimes.

       Mercy is fled to God who mercy made,
       Compassion dead, faith turned into policy,
       Friends know not those who sit in sorrow’s shade.

       Like truthless dreams, so are my joys expired,
       And past return are all my dandled days:
       My love misled, and fancy quite retired,
       Of all which past the sorrow only stays.

       My lost delights, now clean from sight of land,
       Have left me all alone in unknown ways:
       My mind to woe, my life in fortune’s hand,
       Of all which past the sorrow only stays.

      As in a country strange without companion
      I only wail the wrong of death’s delays,
      Whose sweet spring spent, whose summer well nigh done,
      Of all which past the sorrow only stays.

      Whom care forewarns, ere age and Winter cold,
      To haste me hence, to find my fortune’s fold.

      Even such is time that takes in trust
      Our youth, our joys, our all we have,
      And pays us but with earth and dust;
      Who in the dark and silent grave,
      When we have wandered all our ways,
      Shuts up the story of our days.

     But from this earth, this grave, this dust
     My God shall raise me up, I trust.

     Give me my scallop shell of quiet,
     My staff of faith to walk upon,
     My scrip of joy, immortal diet,
     My bottle of salvation:
     My gown of glory, hope’s true gauge,
     And thus I’ll take my pilgrimage. 

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