My heart is like a singing bird, a setting of Christina Rossetti’s poem ‘A birthday’ from
Goblin Market and other Poems (1862), appeared in Set X, though not published until 1918. The collection dates, however, from 1909 when it was sung at Bechstein Hall on 16 November by Agnes Hamilton Harty (née Nicholls), its dedicatee. An impassioned love song, in much the same tradition as Parry’s other high-class drawing-room creations (such as
When comes my Gwen from volume six),
My heart is like a singing bird imparts a sense of nervous exhilaration as the singer awaits the arrival of her beloved.
from notes by Jeremy Dibble © 2001
