Oh darling child I loved too well for happiness, your enemies will kill you and leave your mother forlorn. Your own father’s nobility, where others found protection, means your murder now. I lived never thinking the baby I had was born for butchery by Greeks, but for lordship over all Asia’s pride of earth. Poor child, are you crying too? Do you know what they will do to you? Your fingers clutch my dress. What use to nestle like a young bird under the mother’s wing? Yours the sick leap head-downward from the height, the fall where none have pity, and the spirit crushed out in death. O last and loveliest embrace of all, O child’s sweet fragrant body. Vanity in the end. I nursed for nothing the swaddled baby at this mother’s breast; in vain the wrack of labor pains and the long suffering. Now once again, and never after this, come close to your mother, lean against my breast and wind your arms around my arms and put your lips against my lips.
Andromache’s Lament
Set by Frank Ferko (b. 1950), "Andromache’s Lament" [ soprano, mixed chorus ], from Stabat Mater, no. 1 [Sung Text]
Note: this setting is made up of several separate texts.
Text Authorship:
- by Richmond Lattimore (1906 - 1984), appears in The Trojan Women, copyright ©
Based on:
- a text in Greek (Ελληνικά) by Euripides (c484BCE - 406BCE) [text unavailable]
Go to the general single-text view
Researcher for this page: Joost van der Linden [Guest Editor]... 5. Quis est homo qui non fleret, Matrem Christi si videret in tanto supplicio? 6. Quis non posset contristari, Christi Matrem contemplari dolentem cum Filio? 7. Pro peccatis suæ gentis vidit Iesum in tormentis et flagellis subditum. 8. Vidit suum dulcem natum moriendo desolatum, dum emisit spiritum. ...
Text Authorship:
- possibly by Jacopone da Todi (1230 - 1306)
See other settings of this text.
Available translations, adaptations or excerpts, and transliterations (if applicable):
- DUT Dutch (Nederlands) (Lau Kanen) , "Stabat mater"
- ENG English (Michael P Rosewall) , "The sorrowful mother", copyright © 2022, (re)printed on this website with kind permission
- FRE French (Français) (Guy Laffaille) , "La mère pleine de douleurs", copyright © 2010, (re)printed on this website with kind permission
- GER German (Deutsch) (Karl Eitner) , "Stabat mater dolorosa"
Note: There are several versions of this text. Please visit the highly detailed Stabat Mater Website for more information about over 200 Stabat Mater settings and the many textual variants.
Researcher for this page: Guy Laffaille [Guest Editor]