Pleading (Elgar)
Pleading is a poem written by Arthur L. Salmon, and set to music by the English composer Edward Elgar in 1908, as his Op.48.
This is one of the most popular of Elgar's songs, and is set for soprano voice and piano. It was so successful that Elgar also scored it for orchestra. He dedicated it to his great friend Lady Maud Warrender.
The Lyrics
- 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 hope, 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 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 today.
References
- Michael Kennedy, Portrait of Elgar (Oxford University Press, 1968) ISBN 193154145