Preview: The Shearer's Wife
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SKU: A0.992363
Composed by David Hood. 20th Century,Contemporary. Score. 3 pages. DHM #3472755. Published by DHM (A0.992363).The Shearer's Wife is a setting of a poem by the Scots-Australian poet Louis Esson. It evokes the loneliness and melancholy of life in the Australian outback as a shearer's wife goes through long weeks of drudgery and chores as she waits for her husband to return home from seasonal work in the bush. It is scored for high voice (soprano C4 to F5 or tenor C3 to F4) and piano, and is suitable for performance by students at schools and colleges. It is of moderate difficulty.
The Shearer's Wife is also available in a version for unaccompanied SATB choir.
Words:
Before the glare o' dawn I rise
To milk the sleep cows an' shake the droving dust from tired eyes
I set the rabbit traps, then bake the children's bread.
There's hay to stook, and beans to hoe,
Ferns to cut in the scrub below.
Women must work, when men must go shearing from shed to shed.
I patch an' darn, now evening comes,
An' tired I am of labour sore,
Tired o' the bush, the cows, the gums,
But must dree for long months more what no tongue tells.
The moon is lonely in the sky,
The bush is lonely, an' lonely I stare down the track no horse draws nigh,
An' start at the cattle bells.
(Louis Esson, 1878-1943)
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