Dorset composer - Rick Birley
  • HOME [and contact form]
    • Rick Birley biography
  • Compositions [Orchestral works]
    • Symphony ["little bird"]
    • Bishops & Clerks
    • Latin Primer
    • Maverick
    • Christmas Exultation
    • Chamber Symphony in Five Movements
    • Variations on a Plainsong
    • Movement for String Orchestra "magnas inter opes inops"
    • A Little English Folksong Suite/ The Ploughboy
    • English Folksong Suite No.2
    • Chansons de France
    • Marat/Sade Suite >
      • Marat/Sade notes
    • Hebrew Songs of Love, Faith & Survival
    • Call to Remembrance - a meditation on The Last Post
    • Sar-planina - a Macedonian folksong
    • Nursery Rhymes Kaleidoscope
    • Spanish Folksongs
    • Olympian Glories
    • Piano Concerto
    • the Cuckoo - 'cello & chamber orchestra
    • A Dorset Rhapsody
    • Eight Orchestral Studies
    • Romney Facets
    • Lord of the Dance
    • Sea Song
    • Greensleeves
    • Blaydon Races
  • Compositions [Choral]
    • Compositions [choral/orch] - SACRED >
      • Advent Carol Succession >
        • Advent Carol Succession notes
      • Songs of Time
    • Compositions [Choral/Orch] - SECULAR >
      • Fern Hill
      • Universal Truth
      • The Jackdaw of Rheims
      • Nine Welsh Folksong Arrangements
    • Compositions [Choral a capella SACRED] >
      • Three Motets
      • Carol: I Sing of a Maiden
      • Gaudete, gaudete!
    • Compositions [Choral a capella SECULAR] >
      • Three Hardy Settings for unaccompanied choir
      • The Cuckoo
      • Dance to your Daddy
      • Drill, Ye Terriers, Drill
      • The Willow Song
      • In Vernali Tempore
      • My Love in her Attire
  • Compositions [Vocal]
    • Compositions [Vocal] SECULAR >
      • Edges
      • Seven Folksong Ballads
      • Hardy Songs
    • Compositions [vocal] SACRED >
      • The Virgin's Song
  • Compositions [chamber/instrumental]
    • Austerity
    • Your Presence [piano/violin]
    • Quintet "magnas inter opes inops"
    • Five Folksong Arrangements (for the Crucible)
    • Latin Primer [Septet]
    • Latin Primer [violin/piano]
    • Past Tense
    • in memoriam G B
    • Variations on a Plainsong - piano transcription
    • Variations on a Plainsong - original version for solo clarinet
    • March Wind
    • Preludes [piano]
    • Carol Preludes [piano]
    • Marat/Sade Suite [2-piano transcription]
    • Piano Sonata
    • Folksong Dance Suite for Cello & Piano
    • Dance to Your Daddy
    • Salutation Carol Prelude [piano]
    • Grazioso (guitar solo)
    • Dorset Suite (guitar duo)
    • Drink Old England Dry: a Folksong Frolic for Busy Fingers
    • Sonatina for Violin & Piano [1979]
    • Donegal - a choral fantasy transcribed for piano
    • The Phoenix
  • Compositions [jazz/light]
    • Funked-up Bach
    • Basement Jazz
    • Too Darn Hot
  • A Dorset Affair
  • Compositions [Pastiche]
    • La Ronde
    • Zartom: Symphony
    • Hornby: Exultate Jubilate
  • The case for a National Rehearsal Orchestra for New Music
  • ARTWORK
    • Rogues gallery....
    • Pembrokeshire scenes i
    • Pembrokeshire scenes ii
    • Durham 'prints'
    • Picture Dorchester....
    • Italy October 2010
    • Paris
    • Prague
    • Miscellaneous
  • Poems
    • We English - a historical rhyme
  • Rick Birley Blog
  • Miscellaneous
    • Maverick
    • Hobie Adventure Island >
      • Maiden Voyage 12.iii.11
  • Compositions [Miscellaneous]
    • Music Hall for Westfield
    • May 24th 2014 Orchestral Concert

Index
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Acteaon i

Actaeon, felicitous youth
Unblushingly fresh,
Did not choose his awful, final truth,
Unwitting in his sight of godly flesh.
But Diana,
Rising from the waters whence
She bathed, with nymphs attending,
Blushed full, and more, in naked shame,
Bold Actaeon her privacy offending
When into her glade he came.
Angrily she cursed his mortal innocence.
 
Twixt his surprise and her displeasure
Diana mutated his natural make
Into a stag, whose swiftest measure
Actaeon’s own hounds delight to subjugate
For lust’s hungry sake
To satiate their appetite,
He with grevious recognition saw his fate,
Started up in desperate flight.
 
Diana, Goddess now, rode as Huntress of the Sky,
Saw poor Actaeon’s hopeless plight
Submit
Within her cruel sight;
Enjoyed his piteous pain,
Waited as he struggled yet, in vain:
His knowledge of her dying with his soul.
She in her heaven, set on high;
He below in hell, by his own hounds
Devoured in bloody whole.
 
Her vengeance knew no bounds
But Death:
And innocence no more
A thing of Beauty on the forest floor.


Cae Rhedyn 13/14.viii.98






(c) 2017 Rick Birley