by Helen Adams Keller (1880 - 1968)
What we have once enjoyed we can never...
Language: English
What we have once enjoyed we can never lose. A sunset, a mountain bathed in moonlight, the ocean in calm and in storm — we see these, love their beauty, hold the vision to our hearts. All that we love deeply becomes a part of us. Our beloved ones are no more lost to us when they die than if they were still laughing and loving and working and playing at our side. Truly, life is overlord of Death and Love can never lose its own.
About the headline (FAQ)
Confirmed with Helen Keller, We Bereaved, Leslie Fulenwider, Inc., 1929. Note: this is a prose text. Line breaks were added arbitrarily.
Text Authorship:
- by Helen Adams Keller (1880 - 1968), no title, appears in We Bereaved, first published 1929 [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 Mari Ésabel Valverde (b. 1987), "Hold the Vision to Our Hearts", published 2013 [ women's chorus, violin and piano ] [sung text not yet checked]
Research team for this page: Emily Ezust [Administrator] , Joost van der Linden [Guest Editor]
This text was added to the website: 2025-11-04
Line count: 10
Word count: 86