"The Self Banished" is a poem written by Edmund Waller in about 1645. It was set to music by the baroque composer John Blow in 1700.[1]
It is also one of the first songs written by the English composer Edward Elgar. Composed in 1875, specifically for "soprano or tenor", it was unpublished until recently.
Lyrics
Blow set stanzas 1 and 2. Elgar added a stanza beginning with his own spelling of "Absence".
THE SELF-BANISHED
- It is not that I love you less
- Than when before your feet I lay:
- But to prevent the sad increase
- Of hopeless love, I keep away.
- In vain! (alas!) for ev'ry thing
- Which I have known belong to you,[2]
- Your form does to my fancy bring,
- And makes my old wounds bleed anew.
- Who in the Spring from the new Sun
- Already has a fever got,
- Too late begins those shafts to shun,
- Which Phoebus through his veins has shot.
- Too late he would the pain assuage,
- And to shadows thick he doth retire;
- About with him he bears the rage,[3]
- And in his tainted blood the fire.
- [Abscence is vain for ev'ry thing
- That I have known belong to you,
- Your form does to my fancy bring,
- And makes my old wounds bleed anew.]*[4]
- But vow'd I have, and never must
- Your banish'd servant trouble you;
- For if I break, you may distrust[5]
- The vow I made to love you, too.
