Francis Quarles
(First Canticle, Benjamin Britten)

Ev’n like two little bank-dividing brooks,
That wash the pebbles with their wanton streams,
And having rang’d and search’d a thousand nooks,
Meet both at length in silver-breasted Thames,
Where in a greater current they conjoin:
So I my best-beloved’s am; so he is mine.

Ev’n so we met; and after long pursuit,
Ev’n so we joyn’d; we both became entire;
No need for either to renew a suit,
For I was flax and he was flames of fire:
Our firm-united souls did more than twine;
So I my best-beloved’s am; so he is mine.

If all those glitt’ring Monarchs that command
The servile quarters of this earthly ball,
Should tender, in exchange, their shares of land,
I would not change my fortunes for them all:
Their wealth is but a counter to my coin:
The world’s but theirs; but my beloved’s mine.

Nay, more; If the fair Thespian Ladies all
Should heap together their diviner treasure:
That treasure should be deem’d a price too small
To buy a minute’s lease of half my pleasure;
’Tis not the sacred wealth of all the nine
Can buy my heart from him, or his, from being mine.

Nor Time, nor Place, nor Chance, nor Death can bow
My least desires unto the least remove;
He’s firmly mine by oath; I his by vow;
He’s mine by faith; and I am his by love;
He’s mine by water; I am his by wine,
Thus I my best-beloved’s am; thus he is mine.

He is my Altar; I, his Holy Place;
I am his guest; and he, my living food;
I’m his by penitence; he mine by grace;
I’m his by purchase; he is mine, by blood;
He’s my supporting elm; and I his vine;
Thus I my best beloved’s am; thus he is mine.

He gives me wealth; I give him all my vows:
I give him songs; he gives me length of dayes;
With wreaths of grace he crowns my conqu’ring brows,
And I his temples with a crown of Praise,
Which he accepts as an everlasting signe,
That I my best-beloved’s am; that he is mine.

I've been on a Britten kick recently.

I can't really imagine that I can understand anything he writes on a musical level and I should be happy if I could even concieve of performing any of the solo music he wrote. But the reason I'm beginning to like Britten more and more is that somehow he makes otherwise inaccessible poetry somehow comprehensible.

The classical example, of course, is his setting of Christopher Smart's Iubilate Agno, Rejoice in the Lamb. I don't have the patience to sit through Smart's poem (written, probably, in a religious frenzy), but there's something stirring about how Britten interpret's Smart's sense of religion (God in his cat, divinity in a mouse, blessings in flowers), and dispenses the otherwise insane ramblings as a very wild, unmarketable, unpopularizable, albeit poignantly real version of religion.

Britten's Canticles are along the same lieu. Quarles's erotic religioius poetry would have remained a mere footnote to homosexuality in religion without Britten. Of course, who knows how Britten realized the work: perhaps it was a masked tribute to Piers. But there's something embarassingly adolescent about Quarles's love that makes me believe that Britten had more sense than that (the Michelangelo sonnets, I think, are more his style). No--the Canticles are Britten returning to a non-trivial version of religion, so unapologetic and unabashed in its love that it moves into the erotic, and so very different from the unattractive pop-versions of religion streaming from street-corner and proselyte. Britten's setting of it makes it real: somehow lingering and haunting and wholly devoted. And although it might draw sniggers and raised eyebrows from the infantile pedants such as myself, who think they can read something further into the text and the setting, something knowing and telling, and worthy of giggling and nudging the colleague next to me, Britten's setting (nee Quarles's) realizes this and still remains open and unashamed. To change the way it's set would be to change the meaning, compromising it: thus I my best-beloved’s am; thus he is mine.