George Meredith, the poet who wrote the original "The Lark Ascending" died in 1909. Vaughan Williams worked on his "pastoral romance for orchestra" The Lark Ascending before the outbreak of the Great War, and inscribed selected lines from Meredith's poem on the flyleaf of the published work. They are the opening and closing lines (so the entire poem is invoked), and between them the six lines in which the lark is made to embody the wine. In choosing these lines Vaughan Williams may have been drawing out a eucharistic resonance in Meredith's image.
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