Epitaphs and Elegies - A Cycle of Eight Character Songs

Song Cycle by Roger S. Keele (b. 1954)

1. Delores Todd

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2. Mrs. George Reece

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3. April May

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4. Elegy for a cat  [sung text not yet checked]

Language: English 
Pet was never mourned as you, 
Purrer of the spotless hue, 
Plumy tail, and wistful gaze 
While you humoured our queer ways, 
Or outshrilled your morning call 
Up the stairs and through the hall - 
Foot suspended in its fall - 
While, expectant, you would stand 
Arched, to meet the stroking hand; 
Till your way you chose to wend 
Yonder, to your tragic end. 

Never another pet for me! 
Let your place all vacant be; 
Better blankness day by day 
Than companion torn away. 
Better bid his memory fade, 
Better blot each mark he made, 
Selfishly escape distress 
By contrived forgetfulness, 
Than preserve his prints to make 
Every morn and eve an ache. 

From the chair whereon he sat 
Sweep his fur, nor wince thereat; 
Rake his little pathways out 
Mid the bushes roundabout; 
Smooth away his talons’ mark 
From the claw-worn pine-tree bark, 
Where he climbed as dusk embrowned, 
Waiting us who loitered round. 

Strange it is this speechless thing, 
Subject to our mastering, 
Subject for his life and food 
To our gift, and time, and mood; 
Timid pensioner of us Powers, 
His existence ruled by ours, 
Should - by crossing at a breath 
Into safe and shielded death, 
By the merely taking hence 
Of his insignificance - 
Loom as largened to the sense, 
Shape as part, above man’s will, 
Of the Imperturbable. 

As a prisoner, flight debarred, 
Exercising in a yard, 
Still retain I, troubled, shaken, 
Mean estate, by him forsaken; 
And this home, which scarcely took 
Impress from his little look, 
By his faring to the Dim 
Grows all eloquent of him. 

Housemate, I can think you still 
Bounding to the window-sill, 
Over which I vaguely see 
Your small mound beneath the tree, 
Showing in the autumn shade 
That you moulder where you played.

Text Authorship:

  • by Thomas Hardy (1840 - 1928), "Last words to a dumb friend"

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5. Russian Sonia

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6. The lament of Frostina the snow woman (who would be Snow Queen)

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7. Constance Hope

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8. Stella Celeste

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Total word count: 293