There are seven that pull the thread

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

”There are seven that pull the thread” is a song with words by W. B. Yeats, and music written by the English composer Edward Elgar in 1901. It is from a play Grania and Diarmid written in poetic prose by Yeats and the Irish novelist George Moore.

The tiny song is for one of the characters, Laban, to sing at her spinning-wheel.

Elgar accompanies Yeats' prose with delicate and imaginative orchestration. He employs only the muted strings of the orchestra. The song is unhurried, and delicate, in little recitative-like sections. The dynamic indicated is no more than a soft pianissimo.

[edit] Lyrics

There are seven that pull the thread -

There is one under the waves,

There is one where the winds are wove,

There is one in the old grey house

Where the dew is made before dawn.

One lives in the house of the sun,

And one in the house of the moon,

And one lies under the boughs of the golden apple tree,

And one spinner is lost.

Holiest, holiest seven

Put all your pow'r on the thread

That I've spun in the house tonight.

[edit] References

• Kennedy, Michael, Portrait of Elgar (Oxford University Press, 1968) ISBN 0193154145
• Moore, Jerrold N. “Edward Elgar: a creative life” (Oxford University Press, 1984) ISBN 0193154471