Lyrics Facade for Reciter and Orchestra : Hornpipe - Edith Sitwell, Frederik Prausnitz, Chamber Orchestra

Facade for Reciter and Orchestra : Hornpipe

Sailor come
To the drum
Out of Babylon;
Hobby-horses
Foam, the dumb
Sky rhinoceros glum
Watched the courses of the breakers' rocking-horses and with Glaucis
Lady Venus on the settee of the horsehair sea!
Where Lord Tennyson in laurels wore a gloria free
In a borealic iceberg came Victoria;
she
Knew Prince Albert’s tall memorial took the colors of the floreal
And the borealic iceberg;
floating on they see
New-arisen Madam Venus for whose sake from far
Came the fat and zebra’d emperor from Zanzibar
Where like golden bouquets lay far Asia, Africa, Cathay
All laid before that shady lady by the fibroid Shah
Captain Fracasse stout as any water-butt came, stood
With Sir Bacchus both a-drinking the black tarr’d grapes' blood
Plucked among the tartan leafage
By the furry wind whose grief age
Could not wither — like a squirrel with a gold star-nut
Queen Victoria sitting shocked upon the rocking horse
Of a wave said to the Laureate, «This minx of course
Is as sharp as any lynx and blacker-deeper than the drinks and quite as
Hot as any Hottentot, without remorse!
For the minx"
Said she
«And the drinks
You can see
Are hot as any Hottentot and not the goods for me!»