Look down, fair moon and bathe this scene, Pour softly down night's nimbus floods, on faces ghastly, swollen, purple; On the dead, on their backs, with [their]1 arms toss'd wide, Pour down your unstinted nimbus, sacred moon.
Songs of Love and War
Song Cycle by Vivian Fine (1913 - 2000)
1. Look down, fair moon  [sung text checked 1 time]
Authorship:
- by Walt Whitman (1819 - 1892), "Look down, fair moon", appears in Drum Taps, first published 1965
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View original text (without footnotes)Confirmed with Drum-Taps, ed. by Matt Cohen, Ed Folsom, & Kenneth M. Price, The Walt Whitman Archive
1 omitted by Rands.Research team for this page: Emily Ezust [Administrator] , Joost van der Linden [Guest Editor]
2. Stabat mater  [sung text checked 1 time]
The grieving mother stood on the square [ ... ]
Authorship:
- by (Helen) Joy Davidman (1915 - 1960), copyright ©
Based on:
- a text in Polish (Polski) by Jozef Wittlin (1896 - 1976), copyright © [text unavailable]
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This text may be copyright, so we will not display it until we obtain permission to do so or discover it is public-domain.3. The Song of Songs  [sung text checked 1 time]
The flow'rs appear on the earth; the time of the singing of birds is come, and the voice of the turtle is heard in our land. I will rise now, and go about the city in the streets, and in the broad ways I will seek him whom my soul loveth; I sought him, but I found him not. The watchmen that go about the city found me: to whom I said, Saw ye him whom my soul loveth? It was but a little that I passed from them, but I found him, whom my soul loveth; I held him, and would not let him go, until I had brought him into my mother's house, and into the chamber of her that conceived me. I charge you, o ye daughters of Jerusalem, by the roes, and by the hinds of the field, that ye stir not up, not awake my love, till he please. My beloved is mine, and I am his: he feedeth among the lilies.
Authorship:
- by Bible or other Sacred Texts [an adaptation]
Based on:
- a text in Latin by Bible or other Sacred Texts , no title, appears in Canticum Canticorum Salomonis (Song of Songs of Solomon), no. 2
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Researcher for this text: Emily Ezust [Administrator]4. My Triumph lasted till the drums  [sung text checked 1 time]
My Triumph lasted till the Drums Had left the Dead alone And then I dropped my Victory And chastened stole along To where the finished Faces Conclusion turned on me And then I hated Glory And wished myself were They. What is to be is best descried When it has also been -- Could Prospect taste of Retrospect The tyrannies of Men Were Tenderer -- diviner The Transitive toward. A Bayonet's contrition Is nothing to the Dead.
Authorship:
- by Emily Dickinson (1830 - 1886), no title
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Researcher for this text: Emily Ezust [Administrator]5. Reconciliation  [sung text checked 1 time]
Word over all, beautiful as the sky! Beautiful that war, and all its deeds of carnage,/ must in time be utterly lost; That the hands of the sisters Death and Night, / incessantly softly wash again, and ever again, this soil'd world: ...For my enemy is dead -- a man divine as myself is dead; I look where he lies, white-faced and still, in the coffin -- I draw near; [I bend]1 down, and touch lightly with my lips the white face in the coffin.
Authorship:
- by Walt Whitman (1819 - 1892), "Reconciliation", appears in Leaves of Grass
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Available translations, adaptations or excerpts, and transliterations (if applicable):
- FRE French (Français) (Guy Laffaille) , "Réconciliation", copyright © 2018, (re)printed on this website with kind permission
1 Rorem: "Bend down"
Researcher for this text: Emily Ezust [Administrator]