Did you see the Last Night of the Proms...?

Marin Alsop and Joyce DiDonato -

Exuberant tiddly-om-pom-poms,

In harmony - and legato!

 

Little and Large - they seemed to me,

Conductor and soprano;

Arms and voice worked gleefully

With little performed "piano"!

 

No Sea Shanties - some were sad

And thought this left a void -

But I liked "HMS Trinidad",

A march by the late George Lloyd.

 

To a warship doomed in Arctic seas

Where Lloyd's own shipmates died,

When a rogue torpedo did as she pleased

And struck her in the side.

 

It took many years for Lloyd to make

A recovery - truth to tell,

And that was time for fates to take

A future in music as well.

 

But the wheel turns and age paid back

A measure of what was taken;

Where before he'd suffered a lack 

Of esteem - we were stirred and shaken!

 

In death - if not in his own day

Lloyd's music now finds its place;

This year's  Last Night showed the way -

To many a smiling face.

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