Uploaded May 2014 | Updated September 2026, 2 weeks ago
Heres a virtual movie of the Australian born poet writer and music critic WJ Turner reading his great mystical poem of the imagination "Romance" - " Chimborazo, Cotopaxi". This poem is about halcyon childhood memories and conjures mystical qualities from its use of south American place names like " Chimborazo, Cotopaxi" like a child might do filled with wonder when they first hear of such extra-ordinary places we all become that child again when we encounter this lovely poem.
Walter James Redfern Turner (13 October 1889 -- 18 November 1946) was an Australian-born, English-domiciled writer and critic.
Born in Melbourne, the son of a church musician, he was educated at a technical college in that city, but left for England to pursue a career in writing. There he met and befriended a number of literary intellectual figures, including Siegfried Sassoon, Virginia Woolf, Vita Sackville-West, and Lady Ottoline Morrell (the caricature of her in his book The Aesthetes ended their friendship). During the period from the First World War until the mid 1930s, he was known primarily as a poet.
W. B. Yeats had the highest praise for Turner's poetry, saying that it left him "lost in admiration and astonishment", and including some of it in his Oxford Book of Modern Poetry (while omitting several authors very much better known today for their verse, such as Wilfred Owen). But today, although Turner produced several novels and plays, as well as books of poems, his reputation rests on his musical biographies of Mozart, Beethoven and Berlioz. These are written in pithy, elegant prose, with great passion and penetration about these figures, whom he revered. His Mozart in particular has been reprinted many times in the 70 years since it was first published, and remains the best single volume to recommend for the general reader. Some of his musical articles for the New Statesman and other journals were reprinted in Music and Life, Facing the Music, Musical Meanderings, and Variations on the theme of Music. These are filled with iconoclastic views, diverging widely from the primarily bland tone of most musical criticism of its time (or indeed of most times).
Turner was a close friend of the pianist Artur Schnabel, about whom he frequently wrote, and with whom he frequently went hiking. He was a champion of Arturo Toscanini's conducting, which was for him a revelation in structure and expression. During the Second World War, he edited a number of volumes about English culture. He died prematurely of a cerebral thrombosis.
Kind Regards
Jim Clark
All rights are reserved on this video recording copyright Jim Clark 2014
Romance - "Chimborazo, Cotopaxi".......
HEN I was but thirteen or so
I went into a golden land,
Chimborazo, Cotopaxi
Took me by the hand.
My father died, my brother too,
They passed like fleeting dreams,
I stood where Popocatapetl
In the sunlight gleams.
I dimly heard the master's voice
And boys far-off at play,
Chimborazo, Cotopaxi
Had stolen me away.
I walked in a great golden dream
To and fro from school--
Shining Popocatapetl
The dusty streets did rule.
I walked home with a gold dark boy,
And never a word I'd say,
Chimborazo, Cotopaxi
Had taken my speech away:
I gazed entranced upon his face
Fairer than any flower--
O shining Popocatapetl
It was thy magic hour:
The houses, people, traffic seemed
Thin fading dreams by day,
Chimborazo, Cotopaxi
They had stolen my soul away!
Heres a virtual movie of the Australian born poet writer and music critic WJ Turner reading his great mystical poem of the imagination "Romance" - " Chimborazo, Cotopaxi". This poem is about halcyon childhood memories and conjures mystical qualities from its use of south American place names like " Chimborazo, Cotopaxi" like a child might do filled with wonder when they first hear of such extra-ordinary places we all become that child again when we encounter this lovely poem.
Walter James Redfern Turner (13 October 1889 -- 18 November 1946) was an Australian-born, English-domiciled writer and critic.
Born in Melbourne, the son of a church musician, he was educated at a technical college in that city, but left for England to pursue a career in writing. There he met and befriended a number of literary intellectual figures, including Siegfried Sassoon, Virginia Woolf, Vita Sackville-West, and Lady Ottoline Morrell (the caricature of her in his book The Aesthetes ended their friendship). During the period from the First World War until the mid 1930s, he was known primarily as a poet.
W. B. Yeats had the highest praise for Turner's poetry, saying that it left him "lost in admiration and astonishment", and including some of it in his Oxford Book of Modern Poetry (while omitting several authors very much better known today for their verse, such as Wilfred Owen). But today, although Turner produced several novels and plays, as well as books of poems, his reputation rests on his musical biographies of Mozart, Beethoven and Berlioz. These are written in pithy, elegant prose, with great passion and penetration about these figures, whom he revered. His Mozart in particular has been reprinted many times in the 70 years since it was first published, and remains the best single volume to recommend for the general reader. Some of his musical articles for the New Statesman and other journals were reprinted in Music and Life, Facing the Music, Musical Meanderings, and Variations on the theme of Music. These are filled with iconoclastic views, diverging widely from the primarily bland tone of most musical criticism of its time (or indeed of most times).
Turner was a close friend of the pianist Artur Schnabel, about whom he frequently wrote, and with whom he frequently went hiking. He was a champion of Arturo Toscanini's conducting, which was for him a revelation in structure and expression. During the Second World War, he edited a number of volumes about English culture. He died prematurely of a cerebral thrombosis.
Kind Regards
Jim Clark
All rights are reserved on this video recording copyright Jim Clark 2014
Romance - "Chimborazo, Cotopaxi".......
HEN I was but thirteen or so
I went into a golden land,
Chimborazo, Cotopaxi
Took me by the hand.
My father died, my brother too,
They passed like fleeting dreams,
I stood where Popocatapetl
In the sunlight gleams.
I dimly heard the master's voice
And boys far-off at play,
Chimborazo, Cotopaxi
Had stolen me away.
I walked in a great golden dream
To and fro from school--
Shining Popocatapetl
The dusty streets did rule.
I walked home with a gold dark boy,
And never a word I'd say,
Chimborazo, Cotopaxi
Had taken my speech away:
I gazed entranced upon his face
Fairer than any flower--
O shining Popocatapetl
It was thy magic hour:
The houses, people, traffic seemed
Thin fading dreams by day,
Chimborazo, Cotopaxi
They had stolen my soul away!
