Come Sing And Be Happy (William Murrell Tolkien)

Source: HathiTrust Digital Library 

William Murrell Tolkien (1810, Clerkenwell – 1882, Chiswick) was one of 14 (sic!) children of George Tolkien (1784–1840) and Eliza Lydia, née Murrell (1787–1863). George, his father, belonged to the first generation of the Tolkien family born in England. His father, John Benjamin Tolkien (1752–1819) was born in Danzig (Gdańsk), in Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. The Tolkiens were a musical family. George was not only a music teacher, but also a bass singer in the Drury Lane Company of the Theatre Royal in London. His sons were composers and poets, and William Murrell Tolkien composed among other songs this nice piece to the music of J. Strauss:

Come sing and be happy; enjoy ye the hours

While the full tide of pleasure uncreasingly flows.

Tis enough to be sad when the sky darkly low'rs

With storms that may break our repose.

Then wake the harp to gladness new
And breath a cheerful, a cheerful lay.
Twill chase the shadows from thy brow
And brightest smiles, and brightest smiles display.

Come sing and be happy; tis folly to muse

On the past, since those moments return never more

While with its enchantment the present still woos,
To joys like to those which are o'er.

Then join the dance where beaming eyes
To light some hearts, to light some hearts give rest.
The joyous laugh shall still thy sighs
And charm thy griefs and charm thy eres dim griefs to rest.

William Murrell, a younger brother of J. R. R. Tolkien's grandfather, John Benjamin Tolkien (1807–1896) had a wife, Augusta, née Waller and they had no children. In 1881, a year before his death, the couple lived at Pavilion Place, Chiswick, Middlesex. Earlier a composer and pianoforte manufacturer, in 1881 William Murrel Tolkien worked as a commercial traveller.