This edition was prepared by David Anderson — free to download, print, rehearse and perform.
Cynthia
Staff Notation • Secular, Partsongs
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Cynthia by John Bailey Surgey — Lyrics
From her, alas! whose smile was love,
I wander to some lonely cell:
My sighs too weak the Maid to move,
I bid the flatterer Hope farewell.
Be all her siren arts forgot,
That fill’d my bosom with alarms:
Ah! let her Crime, a little spot,
Be lost amidst her blaze of Charms.
As on I wander slow, my sighs
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About Cynthia
John Bailey Surgey’s Cynthia sets a poignant English text by Peter Pindar, a pseudonym of John Wolcot. The composer captures the despair of a jilted lover, whose sighs are too weak to move the object of his affection, leading him to bid farewell to hope. The SATB voices convey the narrator’s internal conflict as he attempts to forget the ‘siren arts’ of the woman he loves, acknowledging her charm even as he laments her ‘crime’. He yearns for her return, though the text ultimately suggests that absence will bring solace, allowing him to merely ‘flutter at her name’ rather than be consumed by the ‘fatal flame’.
