The Land of Long Ago
Music: Ellen Dickson (1819–1878) · Words: Thomas Westwood (died 1888)
Do you ask me, little people, Where I find my
songs and ditties? Oh, it’s far from tow’r and
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The words
Do you ask me, little people, Where I find my
songs and ditties? Oh, it’s far from tow’r and
steeple, Far from fields, and far from cities;
Ay, so very far that never, Though your feet
were like the wind, Could you reach the place
for ever Out of sight, and out of mind Wait,
my children, time will show it, Through the
gloom of years ’twill grow, Clear to all your
eyes–– You’ll know it As the land of Long ago.
You may laugh, my little people,
But be sure my story’s true, For I vow,
by yon church steeple, I was once a child like
you; Just as frisky in the wildwood,
Just as nimble in the race; But I lost my happy
childhood; Do you ask in what strange place,
In what darksome lanes and alleys,
It slipp’d from me? you shall know;
It was in the dewy valleys Of the Land of Long
a– go.
Now the portal closes, closes,
And the darkness walls it round,
Leaving childhood by the roses,
Age upon the flinty ground: Nay,
my children, not in sadness, Nor reproach,
these words I say; God is good, and gives new
gladness, When the old He takes away But where
all my songs and ditties I go seeking,
now you know; Far from fields, and far from
cities, In the Land of Long a– go.
About this song
- Music
- Ellen Dickson (1819–1878) (dates as OpenScore states them)
- Words
- Thomas Westwood (died 1888) (dates as LiederNet Archive states them)
- Language
- English, as its source states it
- First published
- in or before 1873, as IMSLP states it
- Length
- 1:46
- Verses
- 2
- The score
- OpenScore Lieder Corpus; CC0 1.0, as its source states it. OpenScore Lieder Corpus (CC0)
- Offered in
- the United States, the European Union, Iceland, Liechtenstein and Norway, Spain, France, the United Kingdom, Japan, the Republic of Korea, Canada, Australia, Mexico, Jamaica, Colombia, India, China, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Singapore, the Philippines, Indonesia, Viet Nam, Thailand, Malaysia, Russia, Ukraine, Türkiye, Israel, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Nigeria, South Africa, Kenya, Brazil, Chile, Peru, Switzerland, New Zealand, Pakistan, Nepal, Sri Lanka, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Myanmar, Morocco, Iraq, Sudan, Yemen and Syria, Ethiopia, Tanzania, Uganda, Malawi and Zambia, Ghana, Mozambique, Angola, Madagascar, Venezuela
- Not offered in
- Egypt, Argentina, Bangladesh, Algeria, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, the member states of the Bangui Agreement (OAPI), Iran, Afghanistan and North Korea, and wherever the site has not read the law
Songs to sing here are made from public-domain scores: the OpenScore Lieder Corpus (CC0), the Mutopia Project (each score's licence as Mutopia states it) and the scores in Japanese Wikipedia's articles (CC BY-SA 4.0, by each article's contributors); dates and first publications as IMSLP, the LiederNet Archive, Mutopia and Wikidata state them. Karaoke videos play in YouTube's player; live channels from the iptv-org database on their own pages; stations from Radio Browser. The piano is the Salamander Grand Piano by Alexander Holm (CC BY 3.0). “K-pop” and “anime songs” are said only where a source says so. Where songs from scores are offered.