LiederNet logo

CONTENTS

×
  • Home | Introduction
  • Composers (20,109)
  • Text Authors (19,482)
  • Go to a Random Text
  • What’s New
  • A Small Tour
  • FAQ & Links
  • Donors
  • DONATE

UTILITIES

  • Search Everything
  • Search by Surname
  • Search by Title or First Line
  • Search by Year
  • Search by Collection

CREDITS

  • Emily Ezust
  • Contributors (1,114)
  • Contact Information
  • Bibliography

  • Copyright Statement
  • Privacy Policy

Follow us on Facebook

by William Henry Davies (1871 - 1940)

The one real gem
Language: German (Deutsch) 
Wealth, Power, and Fame -- aye, even Love, 
  Are but an hour's delight, and go ; 
But Sleep's a blessing to hold fast 
  Till her warm dew becomes Death's snow ; 
All men that scorned Sleep in the past, 
  For any thing beneath the Sun, 
  Will rue it ere their life be done. 

Much it perplexed of late to know 
  What made my heart with joy so light ; 
Until I thought of how sweet Sleep 
  Did, for so many hours each night, 
Keep me in her delicious deep : 
  Charmed me each night with her sweet powers, 
  In one unbroken stretch of hours. 

All-powerful Sleep, thou canst give slaves 
  Kings for attendants ; and their straw 
Becomes in thy soft hands like down ; 
  Thou one real gem, without a flaw, 
That purely shineth in Life's crown ; 
  For Wealth, and Power, and Fame are paste, 
  That into common ashes waste. 

Text Authorship:

  • by William Henry Davies (1871 - 1940), "The one real gem", appears in Nature Poems and Others, first published 1908 [author's text checked 1 time against a primary source]

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

  • by Otto Freudenthal (b. 1934), "The one real gem", 2000 [voice and piano], from 10 poems by William H. Davies for voice and piano, no. 4. [
     text not verified 
    ]

Researcher for this text: Emily Ezust [Administrator]

This text was added to the website: 2011-09-26
Line count: 21
Word count: 144

Gentle Reminder

This website began in 1995 as a personal project by Emily Ezust, who has been working on it full-time without a salary since 2008. Our research has never had any government or institutional funding, so if you found the information here useful, please consider making a donation. Your help is greatly appreciated!
–Emily Ezust, Founder

Donate

We use cookies for internal analytics and to earn much-needed advertising revenue. (Did you know you can help support us by turning off ad-blockers?) To learn more, see our Privacy Policy. To learn how to opt out of cookies, please visit this site.

I acknowledge the use of cookies

Contact
Copyright
Privacy

Copyright © 2025 The LiederNet Archive

Site redesign by Shawn Thuris