music        news/events        bio        contact        recordings Coatsworth Songs 1991 soprano clarinet  piano duration 11' first performance: Rebekah Alexander, Gabriel Merton, and Pei-yah Tsai Marsh Chapel, Boston University / November 7, 2008 SCORE Prelude No Shop Does the Bird Use Nosegay  Interlude The Storm  This is the Hay that No Man Planted Postlude  PROGRAM NOTE Four short poems by the Maine poet Elizabeth Coatsworth, preceded by a Prelude for clarinet and piano, broken by an Interlude and succeeded by a Postlude for solo piano. The texts are simple, perhaps deceptively so. They also harbor a streak of hard pragmatic toughness and, particularly in This is the Hay that No Man Planted, something disquieting. TEXTS No Shop Does the Bird Use No shop does the bird use, no counter nor baker, but the bush is his orchard, the grass his acre, the ant is his quarry, the seed is his bread, and a star is his candle to light him to bed.  Nosegay Violets, daffodils, rose and thorn were all in the garden before you were born.  Daffodils, violets, red and white roses your grandchildren's children will hold to their noses.  The Storm In fury and terror the tempest broke, it tore up the pine and shattered the oak, yet the hummingbird hovered within the hour sipping clear rain from a trumpet flower.  This is the Hay that No Man Planted  Watered by tides, cold and brackish, Shadowed by fog and the sea-born cloud.  Here comes no sound of bobolink's singing, Only the wail of the gull's long cry,  Where men now reap as they reap the meadows Heaping the great gold stacks to dry.  All winter long when deep pile the snowdrifts, And cattle stand in the dark all day,  Many a cow shall taste pale seaweed Twined in the stalks of the wild salt hay  Elizabeth Coatsworth (1893–1990)