1949


Song of Innocence

Text by William Blake

Songs to Children, Op. 76 Song Collection


Song of Innocence is the final song from Gardner Read's Songs to Children, Op. 76 and sets " Piping down the valleys wild from" from William Blake's Songs of Innocence to music.

Text

 Piping down the valleys wild from Songs of Innocence

By William Blake

 

Piping down the valleys wild,     

Piping songs of pleasant glee,     

On a cloud I saw a child,     

And he laughing said to me:     

“Pipe a song about a Lamb!”     

So I piped with merry cheer.     

“Piper, pipe that song again;”     

so I piped: he wept to hear.     

“Drop thy pipe, thy happy pipe;    

Sing thy songs of happy cheer.”     

So I sang the same again,     

While he wept with joy to hear.     

“Piper, sit thee down     

and write in a book that all may read.”     

So he vanished from my sight,     

And I pluck’d a hollow reed,     

And I made a rural pen,     

And I stain’d the water clear,     

And I wrote my happy songs     

Ev’ry child may joy to hear.

Records

1999

Gardner Read: The Art of Song

William Blake, Frances Frost, James Joyce, Gardner Read, Henry Russell, Rabindranath Tagore, Jean Starr Untermeyer