Song cycle originally scored for tenor and harp. It also exists in an arrangement for mezzo-soprano and piano. This arrangement was previously on hire and these songs are among Berkeley's earliest compositions, written in the mid-1970s at the suggestion and encouragement of Peter Pears. They are deliberately written in a folk-song idiom, partly because the nature of the words suggested this style. The poems, by Thomas Hardy, were chosen for various treatments of one theme - death, and the grave. Some are wistful, some tragic, some humorous. There are no better programme notes than the words themselves.