I want my girl and I want my pay

[sovay]

For some reason I did not know until tonight that W.H. Auden's "Roman Wall Blues" existed. (Thank Cyril Tawney.) Or that it had been set to music by Benjamin Britten in 1937 as part of a radio play called Hadrian's Wall, of which it is the only surviving part of the score. Or that a recent recording had been briefly available for download free of charge in 2013, which is most certainly not the case anymore.

spatch worked internet magic and got it for me. It's quite good and it does suggest that Britten had just heard Porgy and Bess for the first time.

Anyone with a decent tune for Rosemary Sutcliff's "The Girl I Kissed at Clusium," please feel free to chime in now.

Comments

[choco_frosh]

I was going to ask how the hell you missed that "Roman Wall Blues" existed, since I trend to blithely assume that the Venn-circle "Poetry Schreiber has read" fits neatly inside the "Stuff sovay has read" one. It's so often true (and that poem is so up your alley). I forget that things like A-Levels make weird exceptions to the rule.

[sovay]

I forget that things like A-Levels make weird exceptions to the rule.

I think it's just that while I really like much of Auden's poetry, I haven't read all of Auden's poetry, and "Roman Wall Blues" was in one of the collections I haven't read. I discovered him basically by accident in high school, I think, with "The Shield of Achilles."