Four Songs on Texts of Emily Dickinson

Song Cycle by James Sclater

Translated to:

German (Deutsch) — Vier Lieder nach Texten von Emily Dickinson (Bertram Kottmann)

1. Softened by Time’s consummate plush
 (Sung text)

Language: English 
Softened by Time’s consummate plush,
How sleek the woe appears
That threatened childhood’s citadel
and undermined the years.

Bisected now, by bleaker griefs,
We envy the despair
That devastated childhood’s realm,
so easy to repair.

Text Authorship:

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

  • GER German (Deutsch) (Bertram Kottmann) , copyright © 2016, (re)printed on this website with kind permission

Researcher for this page: Bertram Kottmann

2. To make a prairie
 (Sung text)

Language: English 
To make a prairie it takes a clover and one bee, -
One clover, and a bee,
And revery.
The revery alone will do
If bees are few.

Text Authorship:

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

  • FRE French (Français) (Guy Laffaille) , copyright © 2016, (re)printed on this website with kind permission
  • GER German (Deutsch) (Bertram Kottmann) , copyright © 2016, (re)printed on this website with kind permission

Researcher for this text: Emily Ezust [Administrator]

3. Here, where the Daisies fit my Head
 (Sung text)

Language: English 
Here, where the Daisies fit my Head
'Tis easiest to lie
And every Grass that plays outside
Is sorry, some, for me.

Where I am not afraid to go
I may confide my Flower --
Who was not Enemy of Me
Will gentle be, to Her.

Nor separate, Herself and Me
By Distances become --
A single Bloom we constitute
Departed, or at Home --

Text Authorship:

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

  • GER German (Deutsch) (Bertram Kottmann) , no title, copyright © 2016, (re)printed on this website with kind permission

Note: daisies are associated with the grave; cf. http://www.edickinson.org/words/5254
Researcher for this text: Emily Ezust [Administrator]

4. Bee! I'm expecting you!
 (Sung text)

Language: English 
Bee! I'm expecting you!
Was saying Yesterday
To Somebody you know
That you were due --

The Frogs got Home last Week --
Are settled, and at work --
Birds, mostly back --
The Clover warm and thick --

You'll get my Letter by
The Seventeenth; Reply
Or better, be with me --
Yours, Fly.

Text Authorship:

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

  • GER German (Deutsch) (Sharon Krebs) , copyright © 2014, (re)printed on this website with kind permission
  • GER German (Deutsch) (Bertram Kottmann) , no title, copyright © 2016, (re)printed on this website with kind permission

Confirmed with The Poems of Emily Dickinson, ed. R.W. Franklin, Volume 2, Cambridge, MA and London, England: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1998, Poem 983.

Researcher for this page: Sharon Krebs [Guest Editor]

Total word count: 175