I who am dead a thousand years, And wrote this sweet archaic song, Send you my words for messengers The way I shall not pass along. I care not if you bridge the seas, Or ride secure the cruel sky, Or build consummate palaces Of metal or of masonry. But have you wine and music still, And statues and bright-eyed love, And foolish thoughts of good and ill, And prayers to them who sit above? How shall we conquer? Like a wind That falls at eve our fancies blow, And old Maeonides the blind said it three thousand years ago. O friend unseen, unborn, unknown, Student of our sweet English tongue, Read out my words at night, alone: I was a poet, I was young. Since I can never see your face, And never shake you by the hand, I send my soul through time and space To greet you. You will understand.
To a poet
Song Cycle by Gerald Finzi (1901 - 1956)
1. To a poet a thousand years hence  [sung text checked 1 time]
Authorship:
- by James Elroy Flecker (1884 - 1915)
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Researcher for this text: Emily Ezust [Administrator]2. On parent knees  [sung text checked 1 time]
On parent knees, a naked new-born child, Weeping thou sat'st, while all around thee [smiled]1: So live, that sinking to thy [last long]2 sleep, Calm thou may'st smile, [while]3 all around thee weep.
Authorship:
- by William Jones, Sir (1746 - 1794), no title, subtitle: "From the Persian"
Based on:
- a text in Persian (Farsi) by Anonymous/Unidentified Artist [text unavailable]
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View original text (without footnotes)Confirmed with Bartlett, John, comp. Familiar Quotations, 10th ed, rev. and enl. by Nathan Haskell Dole. Boston: Little, Brown, 1919; Bartleby.com, 2000. www.bartleby.com/100/303.html
1 Fine, Finzi: "smil'd"
2 Fine, Finzi: "life's last"
3 Fine: "whilst"
Researcher for this text: Emily Ezust [Administrator]
3. Intrada  [sung text checked 1 time]
An empty book is like an Infant's Soul, in which anything may be written; it is capable of all things but containeth nothing. I have a mind to fill this with profitable wonders, and with those things which shall shew my Love. Things strange yet common, most high, yet plain: infinitely profitable, but not esteemed; Truths you love, but know not.
Authorship:
- by Thomas Traherne (1637? - 1674), based on Centuries of Meditation I:1.2.3.
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Researcher for this text: Emily Ezust [Administrator]4. The birthnight  [sung text checked 1 time]
Dearest, it was a night That in its darkness racked Orion's stars; A sighing wind ran faintly white Along the willows, and the cedar boughs Laid their wide hands in stealthy peace across The starry silence of their antique moss: No sound save rushing air Cold, yet all sweet with Spring, And in thy mother's arms, couched weeping there, Thou, lovely thing.
Authorship:
- by Walter De la Mare (1873 - 1956), "The birthnight", from Poems, subsequently revised, first published 1906
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Researcher for this text: Emily Ezust [Administrator]5. June on Castle Hill  [sung text checked 1 time]
On its grassy brow [ ... ]
Authorship:
- by Frank Lawrence Lucas (1894 - 1967), copyright ©
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This text may be copyright, so we will not display it until we obtain permission to do so or discover it is public-domain.6. Ode on the rejection of St. Cecilia  [sung text checked 1 time]
Rise, underground sleepers, rise from the grave [ ... ]
Authorship:
- by George Granville Barker (1913 - 1991), "Ode against St. Cecilia's Day", appears in News of the World, first published 1950, copyright ©
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This text may be copyright, so we will not display it until we obtain permission to do so or discover it is public-domain.