Shadow Songs

Song Cycle by Scott Gendel (b. 1977)

1. Hear my voice  [sung text not yet checked]

Language: English 
Leave, O leave me to my sorrows;
Here I'll sit and fade away,
Till I'm nothing but a spirit,
And I lose this form of clay.

Then if chance along this forest
Any walk in pathless ways,
Thro' the gloom he'll see my shadow
Hear my voice upon the breeze.

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Researcher for this text: Emily Ezust [Administrator]

2. Mad song  [sung text not yet checked]

Language: English 
The wild winds weep
  And the night is a-cold;
Come hither, Sleep,
  And my griefs unfold:
But lo! the morning peeps
  Over the eastern steeps,
And the rustling birds of dawn
  The earth do scorn. 

Lo! to the vault
  Of paved heaven,
With sorrow fraught
  My notes are driven:
They strike the ear of night,
  Make weep the eyes of day;
They make mad the roaring winds,
  And with tempests play. 

Like a fiend in a cloud,
  With howling woe,
After night I do crowd,
  And with night will go;
I turn my back to the east,
From whence comforts have increas'd;
For light doth seize my brain
With frantic pain.

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

  • CAT Catalan (Català) (Salvador Pila) , "Cançó esbojarrada", copyright © 2014, (re)printed on this website with kind permission

Note: said to have been written by Blake at the age of fourteen. First published in Poetical Sketches, 1783. In later editions of the poem, the word "unfold" in stanza 1, line 4 was changed to "infold".


Researcher for this text: Emily Ezust [Administrator]

3. Memory  [sung text not yet checked]

Language: English 
Memory, hither come
  And tune your merry notes;
And while upon the wind
  Your music floats,

I'll pore upon the stream,
  Where sighing lovers dream,
And fish for fancies as they pass
  Within the watery glass.

I'll drink of the clear stream,
  And hear the linnet's song,
And there I'll lie and dream
  The day along;

And when night comes I'll go
  To places fit for woe,
Walking along the darkened valley,
  With silent melancholy.

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Researcher for this page: Ted Perry

4. Fade away  [sung text not yet checked]

Language: English 
Leave, O leave me to my sorrows;
Here I'll sit and fade away,
Till I'm nothing but a spirit,
And I lose this form of clay.

Then if chance along this forest
Any walk in pathless ways,
Thro' the gloom he'll see my shadow
Hear my voice upon the breeze.

Text Authorship:

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Researcher for this text: Emily Ezust [Administrator]
Total word count: 286