The Clown
Music: Ethel Smyth (1858–1944) · Words: Maurice Baring (1874–1945)
There was once a poor clown all dressed in white
And chained to the dungeon bars And he danced
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The words
There was once a poor clown all dressed in white
And chained to the dungeon bars And he danced
all day and he danced all night
To the sound of the dancing stars.
O clown, silly clown, O why do you dance?
You know you can never be free You are tied by
the leg to the strings of chance Yet you dance
like a captive flea
My chain is heavy, my cell is dark I know I can
never be free In my heart, in my heart there's
a dancing spark And the stars make music for
me
O muffle my cell and rivet my chains And
fetter my feet and my hands My soul is a horse
of foam without reins That dances on deathless
sands my soul is a horse of foam that dances on
deathless sands My soul is a horse of foam
without reins that dances on deathless sands
that dances dances on deathless sands
dances
on deathless sands
my soul is a horse of foam without reins That
dances on deathless sands
Oh muffle my cell and rivet my chains And
fetter my feet and my hands.
About this song
- Music
- Ethel Smyth (1858–1944) (dates as OpenScore states them)
- Words
- Maurice Baring (1874–1945) (dates as LiederNet Archive states them)
- Language
- English, as its source states it
- First published
- in or before 1913, as IMSLP states it
- Length
- 2:46
- Its source files it as
- 3 Songs
- 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, the United Kingdom, Japan, the Republic of Korea, Canada, Australia, 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, 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
- France, Mexico, Egypt, Argentina, Chile, 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.