[Editor: This poem by John Shaw Neilson was published in Heart of Spring (1919), Ballad and Lyrical Poems (1923), and Collected Poems of John Shaw Neilson (1934).]
Green Singer
All singers have shadows
that follow like fears,
But I know a singer
who never saw tears:
A gay love — a green love —
delightsome! divine!
The Spring is that singer —
an old love of mine!
All players have shadows
and into the play
Old sorrows will saunter —
old sorrows will stay.
But here is a player
whose speech is divine!
The Spring is that player —
an old love of mine!
All singers grow heavy:
the hours as they run
Bite up all the blossoms,
suck up all the sun.
But I know a singer,
delightsome! divine!
The gay love — the green love —
an old love of mine!
Source:
Shaw Neilson, Heart of Spring, Sydney: The Bookfellow, 1919, page 2
Also published in:
John Shaw Neilson, Ballad and Lyrical Poems, Sydney: Bookfellow in Australia, 1923, page 79
John Shaw Neilson (edited by R. H. Croll), Collected Poems of John Shaw Neilson, Melbourne: Lothian Publishing Company, 1934, page 2
Editor’s notes:
gay = happy, joyous, carefree; well-decorated, bright, attractive (in modern times it may especially refer to a homosexual, especially a male homosexual; can also refer to something which is no good, pathetic, useless)
Our choir is thinking of singing this again after many years (we have originals) but want to change the word ‘gay’ to ‘bright’ because of the modern connotation of ‘gay love’.
I believe the song is still under copyright because although Neilson died in 1942, Sutherland only died in 1984 (Australian copyright deems a song to be in the public domain for the duration of a composer’s life + 70 years.)
The publisher is Louise B.M. Dyer (1934) but I can’t find a contact for her.
Who do I now ask if we want to change this one word?