Beautiful must be the mountains whence ye come, And bright in the fruitful valleys the streams, wherefrom Ye learn your song: Where are those starry woods? O might I wander there, Among the flowers, which in that heavenly air Bloom the year long! ... barren are those mountains and spent the streams: Our song is the voice of desire, that haunts our dreams, A throe of the heart, Whose pining visions dim, forbidden hopes profound, No dying cadence nor long sigh can sound, For all our art. Alone, aloud in the raptured ear of men We pour our dark nocturnal secret; and then, As night is withdrawn ... Dream, while the innumerable choir of day Welcome the dawn.
The Voice of Desire
Song Cycle by Judith Weir (b. 1954)
1. The voice of desire
Text Authorship:
- by Robert Seymour Bridges (1844 - 1930), "Nightingales", appears in The Shorter Poems of Robert Bridges, in 5. Book V, first published 1893
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Researcher for this text: Emily Ezust [Administrator]2. White eggs in the bush
The blue cuckoo [ ... ]
Text Authorship:
- by Horst Ulrich Beier, Chief (1922 - 2011), as Ulli Beier, copyright © 2002
Based on:
- a text in Yorùbá by Anonymous/Unidentified Artist [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. Written on terrestrial things
I leaned upon a coppice gate When frost was specter-gray, And winter's dregs made desolate The weakening eye of day. The tangled bine-stems scored the sky Like strings of broken lyres, And all mankind that haunted nigh Had sought their household fires. The land's sharp features seemed to be The Century's corpse outleant; His crypt the cloudy canopy, The wind his death-lament. The ancient pulse of germ and birth Was shrunken hard and dry, And every spirit upon earth Seemed fervorless as I. At once a voice arose among The bleak twigs overhead In full-hearted evensong Of joy illimited; An aged thrush, frail, gaunt and small, In blast-beruffled plume, Had chosen thus to fling his soul Upon the growing gloom. So little cause for carolings Of such ecstatic sound Was written on terrestrial things Afar or nigh around, That I could think there trembled through His happy good-night air Some blessed hope, whereof he knew And I was unaware.
Text Authorship:
- by Thomas Hardy (1840 - 1928), "By the century's deathbed", December 31st, 1899
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Available translations, adaptations or excerpts, and transliterations (if applicable):
- GER German (Deutsch) [singable] (Walter A. Aue) , "Die dunkelnde Drossel (Am letzten Tag des 19. Jahrhunderts)", copyright © 2010, (re)printed on this website with kind permission
Researcher for this text: Emily Ezust [Administrator]
4. Sweet little red feet
I had a dove and the sweet dove died; And I have thought it died of grieving: O, what could it grieve for? Its feet were tied, With a silken thread of my own hand's weaving; Sweet little red feet! why should you die -- Why should you leave me, sweet bird! why? You lived alone in the forest tree, Why, pretty thing! would you not live with me? I kissed you oft and gave you white peas: Why not live sweetly, as in the green trees?
Text Authorship:
- by John Keats (1795 - 1821), "Song", appears in Life, Letters, and Literary Remains, of John Keats, volume II, first published 1848
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Researcher for this text: Emily Ezust [Administrator]