Скачать или смотреть Chevalier's Lament (Robert Burns / Turlough O'Carolan) –Andrew Calhoun

Chevalier’s Lament
Tune, Captain Okain

The small birds rejoice in the green leaves returning,
The murmuring streamlet winds clear thro’ the vale;
The primroses blush in the dews of the morning,
And wild-scattered cowslips bedeck the green dale:
But what can give pleasure, or what can seem fair,
While the lingering moments are numbered by Care?
No birds sweetly singing, nor flowers gayly springing,
Can sooth the sad bosom of joyless Despair.

The deed that I dared, could it merit their malice,
A king and a father to place on his throne;
His right are these hills, and his right are these vallies,
Where wild beasts find shelter but I can find none:
But ’tis not my sufferings, thus wretched, forlorn,
My brave, gallant friends, ’tis your ruin I mourn;
Your faith proved so loyal in hot, bloody trial,
Alas, can I make it no sweeter return!

Text of the first stanza is from the March 31, 1788 letter to Robert Cleghorn (Lenox MS). Text of the second stanza is from the Second Commonplace Book.
Tune: Captain O Kain, from James Aird’s A Selection of Scotch, English, Irish and Foreign Airs, v. 3 (1788), p. 190, #493, where it is noted as “Irish.” This air, as “Captain O’Kane,” has been credited to Irish harp composer Turlough O’Carolan (1670–1738). It is curious that Burns's lyrics written to the works of various tunesmiths, for example James Oswald and Niel Gow, so seldom credit the composers.