Night Dances - 6 songs for Soprano and Piano

The Crickets sang
And set the Sun
And Workmen finished one by one
Their Seam the Day upon.

The low Grass loaded with the Dew
The Twilight stood, as Strangers do
With Hat in Hand, polite and new
To stay as if, or go.

A Vastness, as a Neighbor, came,
A Wisdom, without Face, or Name,
A Peace, as Hemispheres at Home
And so the Night became.

Some things are dark — or think they are.
But, in comparison to me,
All things are light enough to see
In any place, at any hour.
For I am Nightmare: where I fly,
Terror and rain stand in the sky
So thick, you could not tell them from
That blackness out of which you come.

So much for “where I fly”: but when
I strike, and clutch in claw the brain —
Erebus, to such brain, will seem
The thin blue dusk of pleasant dream.

This shall be thy lullaby,
Rocking on the stormy sea;
Though it roar in thunder wild,
Sleep, stilly sleep, my dark-haired child.

When our shuddering boat was crossing
Eldern's lake, so rudely tossing,
Then 'twas first my nursling smiled;
Sleep, softly sleep, my fair-browed child.

Waves above thy cradle break;
Foamy tears are on the cheek;
Yet the ocean's self grows mild
When it bears my slumbering child.

Sleep, mourner, sleep! -- I cannot sleep
  My weary mind still wanders on;
Then silent weep — I cannot weep,
  For eyes and tears are turned to stone.

[ ... ]

A spider sewed at night
Without a light
Upon an arc of white.
If ruff it was of dame
Or shroud of Gnome,
Himself, himself inform.
Of immortality
His strategy
Was physiognomy.

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