The Mudcat Café TM
Thread #53788 Message #2092206
Posted By: dermod in salisbury
02-Jul-07 - 04:29 AM
Thread Name: Origins: Jeanie with the Light Brown Hair (Foster)
Subject: RE: Lyr Add: Jeanie With the Light Brown Hair
Seeing the words in full of Jeanie, there is striking similarity of language and idea to the much less well known Foster song (but equally compelling), Come With Thy Sweet Voice Again. Both express yearning for a love, lost and irretrievably locked in the past. I have only heard one recording of it, by the tenor Robert White, and even that is long since out of the catalogues. I wonder why one is so well known, and the other so obscure.
Words, as I recall them, are:
Come with they sweet voice again To my heart still dear Laden with soft soothing pain Like a tear, like a tear. Bright visions long vanished Round thy melodies beam Lulled in the lap of a sigh Let me dream, let me dream.
Come again. Come with thy sweet voice again.
Bring not the music that tells How the light hours roll Bring but the music that wells From thy soul, from thy soul. Come not with bright offerings Cold, unhallowed, and new Bring but thine own gentle heart Ever true, ever true.