Life in a love | Escape me?

Life in a love

Language: English

     Escape me?
     Never -
     Beloved!
While I am I, and you are you,
  So long as the world contains us both,
  Me the loving and you the loth,
While the one eludes, must the other pursue.
My life is a fault at last, I fear -
  It seems too much like a fate, indeed!
  Though I do my best I shall scarce succeed -
But what if I fail of my purpose here?

It is but to keep the nerves at strain,
  To dry one's eyes and laugh at a fall,
And baffled, get up to begin again, -
  So the chase takes up one's life, that's all.
While, look but once from your farthest bound,
  At me so deep in the dust and dark,
No sooner the old hope drops to ground
  Than a new one, straight to the selfsame mark,
     I shape me -
     Ever
     Removed!

Text Authorship:

by Robert Browning (1812 - 1889), "Life in a love", appears in Men and Women, Volume I, first published 1855 [author's text not yet checked 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 Granville Ransome Bantock, Sir (1868 - 1946), "Life in a love", 1920, published 1921 [ voice and piano ], from Dramatic Lyrics Set II, no. 4 [sung text not yet checked]
by Émile Antoine Bruguière (b. 1876), "Life in a love", published 1901 [ medium voice and piano ], also set in German (Deutsch) [sung text not yet checked]
by James M. P. Machardy , "Life in a love", published 1876 [ high voice and piano ] [sung text not yet checked]
by Ned Rorem (1923 - 2022), "Life in a love", 1997, published 1999, from Evidence of Things Not Seen, no. 6 [sung text checked 1 time]

Settings in other languages, adaptations, or excerpts:

Also set in German (Deutsch), a translation by Franz Hermann Schneider (1860 - 1930) ; composed by Émile Antoine Bruguière.

Researcher for this page: Ahmed E. Ismail

This text was added to the website: 2004-08-04
Line count: 22
Word count: 144