But soon, too soon, the lover turns his...

But soon, too soon, the lover turns his eyes:
  Again she falls, again she dies, she dies!
  How wilt thou now the fatal sisters move?
  No crime was thine, if 'tis no crime to love.
    Now under hanging mountains,
    Beside the falls of fountains,
    Or where Hebrus wanders,
    Rolling in meanders,
        All alone,
        Unheard, unknown,
        He makes his moan;
        And calls her ghost,
      For ever, ever, ever lost!
      Now with Furies surrounded,
      Despairing, confounded,
      He trembles, he glows,
      Amidst Rhodope's snows:
    See, wild as the winds, o'er the desert he flies;
    Hark! Haemus resounds with the bacchanals' cries--
                       Ah see, he dies!
    Yet even in death Eurydice he sung,
    Eurydice still trembled on his tongue,
          Eurydice the woods,
          Eurydice the floods,
  Eurydice the rocks and hollow mountains rung.

About the headline (FAQ)

Authorship

• by Alexander Pope (1688 - 1744), no title, appears in Ode on St. Cecilia's Day, no. 6, first published 1708 [ author's text checked 1 time]

Musical settings (art songs, Lieder, mélodies, (etc.), choral pieces, and other vocal works set to this text), listed by composer (not necessarily exhaustive)

• by Charles Hubert Hastings Parry, Sir (1848 - 1918), "But soon, too soon, the lover turns his eyes", 1889 [soprano and orchestra], from Ode to St. Cecelia's Day, no. 8. [
   text verified 1 time
  ]

Text added to the website: 2009-09-04.
Last modified: 2014-06-16 10:03:21
Line count: 25
Word count: 128

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