LiederNet logo

CONTENTS

×
  • Home | Introduction
  • Composers (20,139)
  • Text Authors (19,558)
  • 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 Anonymous / Unidentified Author

Hark how the wild musicians sing
Language: English 
Hark how the wild musicians sing
A welcome to the new-born spring,
And in sweet strains, untaught by art,
Unto the wood their joys impart. 

Look how the fields, clad in a flow'ry dress,
Seem to forget their winter nakedness. 
See, fairest, how the budding trees
Put on their summer liveries,
And deck themselves in green array,
To wait upon the youthful May. 

Pleas'd Nature, thus dress'd up in all her charms,
Smiles like a bride clasp'd in her lover's arms. 
Then why, Dorinda, should not we
Rejoice like them, and happy be?

Let's, whilst the Spring of youth doth last,
Strive to redeem lost minutes past. 
We'll freely feast love's eager appetite
With joys to which beauty and youth invite. 

Though now your eyes are all divine
Their lustre will in time decline.
If smiling Youth goes off the stage
The scene will change to wither'd Age.

When all your charms, Dorinda, will decay,
And on a sudden vanish all away. 
Then let us not waste the dear minutes that Love
Has allotted for pleasure, and bids us improve.

To yonder cool shade, my Dorinda, we will fly;
Whilst there in each other's embraces we lie,
We shall pity dull mortals that never did know
The greatest of blessings the gods can bestow. 

Text Authorship:

  • by Anonymous / Unidentified Author [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 Henry Purcell (1658/9 - 1695), "Hark how the wild musicians sing", Z. 542, symphony song [
     text verified 1 time
    ]

Researcher for this page: Athony Burton

This text was added to the website: 2009-07-15
Line count: 30
Word count: 214

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