by Andrew Marvell (1621 - 1678)
Ye living lamps, by whose dear light
Language: English
Ye living lamps, by whose dear light The nightingale does sit so late, And studying all the summer night, Her matchless songs does meditate; Ye country comets, that portend No war nor prince’s funeral, Shining unto no higher end Than to presage the grass’s fall; Ye glow-worms, whose officious flame To wand’ring mowers shows the way, That in the night have lost their aim, And after foolish fires do stray; Your courteous lights in vain you waste, Since Juliana here is come, For she my mind hath so displac’d That I shall never find my home.
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Text Authorship:
- by Andrew Marvell (1621 - 1678), "The Mower to the Glow-Worms" [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 Richard Rodney Bennett (1936 - 2012), "Glow-worms", published 1966, from The Insect World, no. 3 [sung text checked 1 time]
- by David Evan Thomas (b. 1958), "The Mower to the Glow-Worms", 2015 [ tenor and piano ], from Green Thoughts in a Green Shade, no. 2 [sung text checked 1 time]
Researcher for this page: Mike Pearson
This text was added to the website: 2016-07-10
Line count: 16
Word count: 96