Bright star, would I were steadfast as thou art - Not in lone splendour hung aloft the night, And watching, with eternal lids apart, Like nature's patient, sleepless Eremite The moving waters at their priestlike task Of pure ablution round earth's human shores, Or gazing on the new soft fallen mask Of snow upon the mountains, and the moors - No - yet still steadfast, still unchangeable, Pillow'd upon my fair love's ripening breast, To feel for ever its soft fall and swell, Awake forever in a sweet unrest, Still, still to hear her tender-taken breath, And so live ever - or else swoon to death.
Three Dedications
Song Cycle by Betty Roe (b. 1930)
1. His last sonnet  [sung text not yet checked]
Language: English
Authorship:
- by John Keats (1795 - 1821), no title, written 1819?
See other settings of this text.
Available translations, adaptations or excerpts, and transliterations (if applicable):
- GER German (Deutsch) (Richard Flatter) , "Letztes Sonett", appears in Die Fähre, Englische Lyrik aus fünf Jahrhunderten, first published 1936
- ITA Italian (Italiano) (Ferdinando Albeggiani) , "Lucente stella, esser potessi come te costante", copyright © 2010, (re)printed on this website with kind permission
Researcher for this text: Emily Ezust [Administrator]
2. Beeny Cliff  [sung text not yet checked]
Language: English
O the opal and the sapphire of that wandering western sea, And the woman riding high above with bright hair flapping free - The woman whom I loved so, and who loyally loved me. The pale mews plained below us, and the waves seemed far away In a nether sky, engrossed in saying their ceaseless babbling say, As we laughed light-heartedly aloft on that clear-sunned March day. A little cloud then cloaked us, and there flew an irised rain, And the Atlantic dyed its levels with a dull misfeatured stain, And then the sun burst out anew, and purples prinked the main. - Still in all its chasmal beauty bulks old Beeny to the sky, And shall she and I not go there once again now March is nigh, And the sweet things said in that March say anew there by and by? What if still in chasmal beauty looms that wild weird western shore, The woman now is - elsewhere - whom the ambling pony bore, And nor knows nor cares for Beeny, and will laugh there nevermore.
Authorship:
- by Thomas Hardy (1840 - 1928), "Beeny Cliff", appears in Poems of 1912-1913
See other settings of this text.
Researcher for this text: Emily Ezust [Administrator]3. The music tree
Language: English
I have made my tree a singing tree whose every leaf is a note . . . . . . . . . .— The rest of this text is not
currently in the database but will be
added as soon as we obtain it. —
Authorship:
- by Peter Thorogood (b. 1927), copyright ©
Go to the single-text view
This text may be copyright, so we will not display it until we obtain permission to do so or discover it is public-domain.Total word count: 285