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The Rainy Summer
1990

baritone
piano

duration 15' 

first performance: 
Richard Morrison and Patricia Thom
Emmanuel Library, Boston / November 13, 1990 

SCORE
Never May the Fruit be Plucked
The True Encounter
All Souls' Night
The Rainy Summer
The Coming of Good Luck
The Peace of Wild Things

RECORDING—first performance
 
TEXTS
Never May the Fruit be Plucked
Never, never may the fruit be plucked from the bough
And gathered into barrels.
He that would eat of love must eat it where it hangs.
Though the branches bend like reeds,
Though the ripe fruit splash in the grass or wrinkle on the tree,
He that would eat of love may bear away with him
Only what his belly can hold,
Nothing in the apron,
Nothing in the pockets.
Never, never may the fruit be plucked from the bough
And harvested in barrels.
The winter of love is a cellar of empty bins,
In an orchard soft with rot.
Edna St. Vincent Millay (1892–1950)


 The True Encounter
“Wolf!” cried my cunning heart
At every sheep it spied,
And roused the countryside.“Wolf! Wolf!”–and up would start
Good neighbours, bringing spade
And pitchfork to my aid.At length my cry was known:
Therein lay my release.
I met the wolf alone
And was devoured in peace. 
Edna St. Vincent Millay (1892–1950)


All Souls' Night
My love came back to me
Under the November tree
Shelterless and dim.
He put his hand on my shoulder,
He did not think me strange or older,
Nor I, him. 
Frances Cornford (1886–1960)


The Rainy Summer
There's much afoot in heaven and earth this year; 
The winds hunt up the sun, hunt up the moon,
Trouble the dubious dawn, hasten the drear
Height of a threatening noon. 

No breath of boughs, no breath of leaves, of fronds,
May linger or grow warm; the trees are loud;
The forest, rooted, tosses in her bonds,
And strains against the cloud. 

No scents may pause within the garden-fold;
The rifled flowers are cold as ocean-shells;
Bees, humming in the storm, carry the cold
Wild honey to cold cells. 
Alice Meynell (1847–1922) 


The Coming of Good Luck
So good luck came, and on my roof did light
Like noiseless snow, or as the dew of night:
Not all at once, but gently, as the trees
Are by the sunbeams tickled by degrees. 
Robert Herrick (1591–1674) 


The Peace of Wild Things
When despair for the world grows in me
and I wake in the night at the least sound
in fear of what my life and my children's lives may be,
I go and lie down where the wood drake
rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds.
I come into the peace of wild things
who do not tax their lives with forethought
of grief. I come into the presence of still water.
And I feel above me the day-blind stars
waiting with their light. For a time
I rest in the grace of the world, and am free.
Wendell Berry (b.1934)