1. Eric Fenby writes about Cynara in Delius (Faber and Faber, 1971): ‘His [Delius’s] two most persuasive supporters in England now made their appearance separately at Grez to persuade him to agree to a festival of his music which one of them, Sir Thomas Beecham, planned to celebrate in the autumn of 1929. The other, Philip Heseltine, was given the preliminary task of sounding Delius on the project. […] Later Sir Thomas wrote to Delius asking if he had an unpublished work for voice and orchestra to include as a novelty in the programmes. Piles of faded pencil sketches (all in full score) had accumulated from a lifetime’s work. Along with the sketches of Songs of Sunset was one I could not place. On playing it over to Delius he recognized it immediately as a setting for baritone and orchestra of Dowson’s best-known poem Cynara which he had abandoned, indeed quite forgotten, after judging its inclusion inappropriate in the scheme of Songs of Sunset for which it was intended initially. It was complete in every detail up to the words “Then falls thy shadow, Cynara”, at which there was a blank. Delius decided to fill it, and, after some painful and frustrating hours of work, managed to complete the remaining bars. I shall never forget my thrill when I took down the telling chord on the trombones on the final word “Cynara”!’

2. ‘I am not as I was under the reign of good Cynara’ (Horace, Odes, 4. 1).

1. ‘About to die’. Delius omits the title of each poem.

1. ‘While the Fates allow us, let us sate our eyes with love’.

1. ‘O death, how bitter is the remembrance of thee to a man that liveth at peace in his possessions’.

1. The poem resembles Verlaine’s ‘Spleen’ from Romances sans paroles (1874).

1. ‘Life’s brief span forbids our entertaining far-reaching hopes’ (Horace, Odes, 1.4).