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Five English Love Lyrics

Song Cycle by Roger Quilter (1877 - 1953)

1. There be none of Beauty's daughters  [sung text not yet checked]

Language: English 
There be none of Beauty's daughters
  With a magic like thee;
And like music on the waters
  Is thy sweet voice to me:
When, as if its sound were causing
The [charmèd]1 ocean's pausing,
The waves lie still and gleaming,
And the lull'd winds seem dreaming:

And the midnight moon is weaving
  Her bright chain o'er the deep;
Whose breast is gently heaving
  As an infant's asleep:
So the spirit bows before thee,
To listen and adore thee;
With a full but soft emotion,
Like the swell of Summer's ocean.

Text Authorship:

  • by George Gordon Noel Byron, Lord Byron (1788 - 1824), "Stanzas for music", appears in Poems, first published 1816

See other settings of this text.

Available translations, adaptations or excerpts, and transliterations (if applicable):

  • CAT Catalan (Català) (Salvador Pila) , copyright © 2023, (re)printed on this website with kind permission
  • CZE Czech (Čeština) (Jaroslav Vrchlický) , "Sloky pro hudbu"
  • DUT Dutch (Nederlands) [singable] (Lau Kanen) , copyright © 2017, (re)printed on this website with kind permission
  • FRE French (Français) (Alexis Paulin Pâris) , "Stances à mettre en musique"
  • ITA Italian (Italiano) (Ferdinando Albeggiani) , "Fra tutte le più belle", copyright © 2009, (re)printed on this website with kind permission

View original text (without footnotes)
1 Mendelssohn: "charm'd"

Researcher for this text: Emily Ezust [Administrator]

2. Morning Song
 (Sung text)

Language: English 
Pack, clouds, away! and welcome, day!
  With night we banish sorrow.
Sweet air, blow soft; mount, larks, aloft
  To give my Love good-morrow!
Wings from the wind to please her mind,
  Notes from the lark I'll borrow:
Bird, prune thy wing! nightingale, sing!
  To give my Love good-morrow!
      To give my Love good-morrow
      Notes from them both I'll borrow.

Wake from thy nest, robin-red-breast!
  Sing, birds, in every furrow!
And from each bill, let music shrill
  Give my fair Love good-morrow!
Blackbird and thrush in every bush,
  Stare, linnet, and cocksparrow!
You pretty elves, among yourselves
  Sing my fair Love good-morrow;
      To give my Love good-morrow
      Sing, birds, in every furrow!

Text Authorship:

  • by Thomas Heywood (?1574 - 1641), "Matin Song"

See other settings of this text.

Glossary
Stare = starling

Research team for this page: Emily Ezust [Administrator] , Iain Sneddon [Guest Editor]

3. Go, lovely rose
 (Sung text)

Language: English 
Go, lovely Rose! --
Tell her, that wastes her time and me,
  That now she knows,
When I resemble her to thee,
How sweet and fair she seems to be.

Tell her that's young,
  And shuns to have her graces spied
That hadst thou sprung
  In deserts, where no men abide,
Thou must have uncommended died.

Small is the worth
  Of beauty from the light retir'd;
Bid her come forth,
  Suffer herself to be desir'd,
And not blush so to be admir'd.

Then die! -- that she
  The common fate of all things rare
May read in thee:
  How small a part of time they share
That are so wondrous sweet and fair!

Yet though thou fade,
From thy dead leaves let fragrance rise;
And teach the maid
That goodness time's rude hand defies;
That virtue lives when beauty dies.

Text Authorship:

  • by Edmund Waller (1608 - 1687)
  • by Henry Kirke White (1785 - 1806)

See other settings of this text.

Available translations, adaptations or excerpts, and transliterations (if applicable):

  • SPA Spanish (Español) (José Miguel Llata) , copyright © 2020, (re)printed on this website with kind permission

See also Ezra Pound's Envoi.

Researcher for this page: Ted Perry

4. O, the month of May  [sung text not yet checked]

Language: English 
  O, the month of May, the merry month of May,
  So frolic, so gay, and so green, so green, so green!
  O, and then did I unto my true love say,
  "Sweet Peg, thou shalt be my summer's Queen."

Now the nightingale, the pretty nightingale,
The sweetest singer in all the [forest quire]1,
Entreats thee, sweet Peggy, to hear thy true love's tale:
Lo, yonder she sitteth, her breast against a briar.

But O, I spy the cuckoo, the cuckoo, the cuckoo;
See where she sitteth: come away, my joy:
Come away, I prithee, I do not like the cuckoo;
Should sing when my Peggy and I kiss and toy.

  O, the month of May, the merry month of May,
  So frolic, so gay, and so green, so green, so green;
  And then did I unto my true love say,
  "Sweet Peg, thou shalt be my summer's Queen."

Text Authorship:

  • by Thomas Dekker (c1572 - 1632), "The first Three-Man's song", appears in The Shoemaker's Holiday

See other settings of this text.

View original text (without footnotes)
1 Moeran: "forest's choir"

Researcher for this page: Ted Perry

5. The time of roses  [sung text not yet checked]

Language: English 
It was not in the Winter
  Our loving lot was cast;
It was the time of roses -
  We pluck'd them as we [pass'd]1!

[That]2 churlish season never frown'd
  On early lovers yet:
O no - the world was newly crown'd
  With flowers [when first we]3 met!

'Twas twilight, and I bade you go,
  But still you held me fast;
It was the time of roses -
  We pluck'd them as we pass'd!

Text Authorship:

  • by Thomas Hood (1799 - 1845), "Time of Roses", from Literary Souvenirs, first published 1827

See other settings of this text.

View original text (without footnotes)

Confirmed with The Oxford Book of English Verse: 1250–1900, Arthur Quiller-Couch, ed., 1919.

1 Stöhr: "passed" (only here, not in stanza 3)
2 Stöhr: "The"
3 Arditti: "when we"

Researcher for this text: Emily Ezust [Administrator]
Total word count: 573
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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

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