In years defaced and lost.

In memory of the lately deceased HRH Queen Elizabeth and her husband HRH Philip,Duke of Edinburgh.
‘A Spot’ comes from Thomas Hardy's second collection of poems entitled ‘Poems of the Past and the Present’ (1902). Gerald Finzi retitled the text using the first line ‘In years defaced’. His setting is the second song from the cycle ‘Till Earth Outwears’ op.19 (1958). This arrangement for organ is dedicated to the memory of HRH Queen Elizabeth II and her husband HRH The Duke of Edinburgh. With its melancholic tale of a living love now gone and in the past, and a reference to a ‘glen’, the times spent by the royal couple in the Scottish countryside, loved greatly by them both, is particularly reminiscent.

A Spot
In years defaced and lost,
Two sat here, transport-tossed,
Lit by a living love
The wilted world knew nothing of:
Scared momently
By gain-givings,
Then hoping things
That could not be...

Of love and us no trace
Abides upon the place;
The sun and shadows wheel,
Season and season sereward steal:
Foul days and fair
Here, too, prevail,
And gust and gale
As everywhere.

But lonely shepherd souls
Who bask amid these knolls
May catch a faery sound
On sleepy noon-tides from the ground:
‘O not again
Till Earth outwears
Shall love like theirs
Suffuse this glen!’