Pleading (Elgar)

Lyrics#

PLEADING :Will you come homeward from the hills of Dreamland, ::Home in the dusk, and speak to me again? :Tell me the stories that I am forgetting, ::Quicken my hopes, and recompense my pain? :Will you come homeward from the hills of Dreamland? ::I have grown weary, though I wait for you yet; :Watching the fallen leaf, the faith grown fainter, ::The memory smoulder’d to a dull regret. :Shall the remembrance die in dim forgetting– ::All the fond light that glorified my way? :Will you come homeward from the hills of Dreamland, ::Home in the dusk, and turn my night to day?

Recordings#

• Songs and Piano Music by Edward Elgar has “Pleading” performed by Mark Wilde (tenor), with David Owen Norris (piano).
• Elgar: Complete Songs for Voice & Piano Amanda Roocroft (soprano), Reinild Mees (piano)
• Elgar: The Collector’s Edition, CD 29 Robert Tear (tenor), City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra, Vernon Handley (conductor)
• The Songs of Edward Elgar SOMM CD 220 Catherine Wyn-Rogers (soprano) with Malcolm Martineau (piano), at Southlands College, London, April 1999

References#

• Kennedy, Michael Portrait of Elgar (Oxford University Press, 1968)
• Moore, Jerrold N. “Edward Elgar: a creative life” (Oxford University Press, 1984)
• Young, Percy M., Elgar O.M. (Collins, 1955)