1. beauty without kindness cannot be enjoyed.

1. Cardamine pratensis, or Cuckoo-flower. The name implies cuckoldry.

2. Ranunculus bulbosus, or Crowfoot.

3. Cf. ‘up with the lark’.

4. copulate.

1. to warm his hands.

2. cool.

3. sententious saying

4. crab-apples.

1. ‘Fancy’ is probably Poulenc’s last song. In a letter to Bernac dated 4 August 1959, he writes: ‘Marion Harewood has asked me, so sweetly, to participate in a little collection of choruses for children, with Ben, Kodály, etc. … that I cannot refuse, but please guide me regarding accents and the exact meaning of the text, which I get the gist of. “Where is” must be sung on two notes, mustn’t it? Of course I will show you the thing before I send it.’ Poulenc dedicated the song to Miles and Flora, the children from Britten’s opera The Turn of the Screw. The three versions by Britten, Kodály and Poulenc were published in Classical Songs for Children, edited by Marion Harewood and Ronald Duncan.

2. Love.

1. adapt, copy the bird’s song.

1. cruel and contrary to nature.

2. Evergreen holly was venerated and considered to have some connection with the word ‘holy’.

3. turn to ice.

1. Refers to the exchanging of wedding rings and the ringing of the wedding bells.

2. unploughed ridges in an open field.

3. spring-time at its prime.

1. i.e. pilgrim’s dress.

2. decked.

1. opened.

2. Jesus.

3. A common corruption of ‘God’, but also a telling sexual double entendre. Victor Hugo translated: ‘Par Priape! ils sont à blâmer.’

1. head. The reference is to Ophelia’s father, Polonius.

1. An allegorical figure in Iconologia (1593), where Patience is shown seated on a stone with a yoke on her shoulders and her feet on thorns.

1. The song dates from 1942, when Finzi was working in the Ministry of War Transport, a job that he, as a humanist, detested, as this extract from a letter to Toty de Navarro (15 May 1942) makes clear: ‘I have managed to do a pleasant light, troubadorish setting of “O mistress mine” […] But it has taken me more than 3 months to do its four pages. So you’ll know that I’m still baulked, thwarted, fretted, tired, good for nothing and utterly wasting my time in this dismal occupation.’

1. be gone!

2. bewail.

3. corpse.

1. trifle.

2. sots.

1. wickedness, evil.

2. supernatural.

3. ‘Posset is hot milk poured on ale or sack, having sugar, grated bisket, eggs, with other ingredients boiled in it, which goes all to a curd’ (Randle Holmes, Academy of Armourie, 1688).

4. Lady Macbeth hears the clock striking.

1. small, winking, half-shut eyes – the result of over-indulgence.

1. marigolds with closed eyes.

1. thunder-bolt.

2. submit.

3. one who raises spirits.

4. Let Us Garlands Bring was dedicated to Vaughan Williams on his seventieth birthday, and his wife, Ursula, thought that ‘Fear no more the heat of the sun’ was ‘one of the most perfect songs ever written’.

1. female beggar.

2. thieving.

3. bawds.

1. occupy, possess it.

2. driving mist, fog.

1. refrain.

1. Every part of Ferdinand’s father’s body, though destined to decay, will be transformed into something rich and rare, such as coral or pearls.

1. dull grey.

2. dappled.

3. breathes forth.

4. walk.

5. ‘she’, in line 14, = ‘woman’. The meaning of the final couplet is: ‘I think my sweetheart is as special as any woman misrepresented by false comparisons.’

1. sleep, shut my eyes.