We'll to the Woods No More (John Ireland)

We'll to the Woods No More is a song cycle for voice and piano composed in 1928 by John Ireland. It consists of settings of two poems by A. E. Housman (1859–1936) and a concluding piece for solo piano named after a third.^[1]

A performance takes about 8 minutes. The poems are:^[2]

1. "We'll to the Woods No More" (Last Poems (1922), unnumbered preface)
2. "In Boyhood" ("When I would muse in boyhood"; Last Poems, No. XXXII)
3. "Spring Will Not Wait" ("'Tis time, I think, by Wenlock town"; A Shropshire Lad (1896), No. XXXIX)

John France has written, "The mood of this cycle is typically a deep sense of the fragility of life, love and friendship that so influenced both men."^[3] Rob Barnett has written of the piano piece "Spring Will Not Wait" that, "It is in Ireland’s typically elusive, wanderingly ambivalent tonal palette."^[4]