It must be the snow that is giving rise to this nostalgia. Wasn’t every winter as white and as angelic as this long ago when we all knew our sweet love of youth? I know that I then first came to meet the sweet Deanna Durbin when I was in my teens and just beginning my rebellion against the order of the day.
Of course, I would never then have admitted to anything more than a musical interest in her ; but lads don’t tell their mates everything, do they? At any rate, I was surprised and rather disappointed to learn that she had also been a favourite of my elders and betters. Good grief! She was old enough to be my mother. Born in 1921, she retired in 1949 to live in peace (near Paris) with her husband. As far as I know she is still there. I hope so, and I hope too that she reflects shamelessly on the pleasure her singing brought to so many.
Thomas Moore (1779 – 1852) wrote the lines that Deanna here sings. He was Irish and a poet ; what more need we say? Only that he was much more than that. He worked for the Admiralty at some stage ; he knew Byron ; he got into the most horrendous debt and had to flee to Paris until he had paid it off. And he must have known that Miss Durbin was on her way to the world ; for who could sing his poem quite like this?
’TIS the last rose of summer
Left blooming alone;
All her lovely companions
Are faded and gone;
No flower of her kindred,
No rosebud is nigh,
To reflect back her blushes,
To give sigh for sigh.
I’ll not leave thee, thou lone one!
To pine on the stem;
Since the lovely are sleeping,
Go, sleep thou with them.
Thus kindly I scatter
Thy leaves o’er the bed,
Where thy mates of the garden
Lie scentless and dead.
So soon may I follow,
When friendships decay,
And from Love’s shining circle
The gems drop away.
When true hearts lie withered
And fond ones are flown,
Oh! who would inhabit
This bleak world alone?
Adventures of ideas 