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I Shall not Live in Vain

Song Cycle by Joel Weiss

Translated to:

German (Deutsch) — So leb' ich nicht vergebens (Bertram Kottmann)

1. The secret
 (Sung text)

Language: English 
Some things that fly there be, —
Birds, hours, the bumble-bee:
Of these no elegy.

Some things that stay there be, —
Grief, hills, eternity:
Nor this behooveth me.

There are, that resting, rise.
Can I expound the skies?
How still the riddle lies!

Text Authorship:

  • by Emily Dickinson (1830 - 1886), no title

Go to the general single-text view

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

  • GER German (Deutsch) (Bertram Kottmann) , copyright © 2018, (re)printed on this website with kind permission

Researcher for this page: Joel Weiss

2. Almost
 (Sung text)

Language: English 
Within my reach!
I could have touched!
I might have chanced that way!
Soft sauntered through the village,
Sauntered as soft away!
So unsuspected violets
Within the fields lie low,
Too late for striving fingers
That passed, an hour ago.

Text Authorship:

  • by Emily Dickinson (1830 - 1886), no title

Go to the general single-text view

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

  • GER German (Deutsch) (Bertram Kottmann) , copyright © 2018, (re)printed on this website with kind permission

Researcher for this page: Joel Weiss

3. Lost faith
 (Sung text)

Language: English 
To lose one’s faith surpasses 
the loss of an estate,
Because estates can be
Replenished, — faith cannot.

Inherited with life,
Belief but once can be;
Annihilate a single clause,
And Being’s beggary.

Text Authorship:

  • by Emily Dickinson (1830 - 1886), no title

Go to the general single-text view

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

  • GER German (Deutsch) (Bertram Kottmann) , copyright © 2018, (re)printed on this website with kind permission

Researcher for this page: Joel Weiss

4. Upon the gallows hung a wretch
 (Sung text)

Language: English 
Upon the gallows hung a wretch,
Too sullied for the hell
To which the law entitled him.
As nature's curtain fell
The one who bore him tottered in , —
For this was woman's son.
"'Twere all I had," she stricken gasped —
Oh, what a livid boon!

Text Authorship:

  • by Emily Dickinson (1830 - 1886), no title

Go to the general single-text view

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

  • GER German (Deutsch) (Bertram Kottmann) , copyright © 2018, (re)printed on this website with kind permission

Researcher for this page: Joel Weiss

5. If I can stop one heart from breaking
 (Sung text)

Language: English 
If I can stop one heart from breaking,
I shall not live in vain;
If I can ease one life the aching,
Or cool one pain,
Or help one fainting robin
Unto his nest again,
I shall not live in vain.

Text Authorship:

  • by Emily Dickinson (1830 - 1886), no title, appears in Poems of Emily Dickinson, first published 1890

See other settings of this text.

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

  • FRE French (Français) (Guy Laffaille) , appears in Kinder-Lieder, in 2. Lieder und Bilder aus der Natur, copyright © 2016, (re)printed on this website with kind permission
  • GER German (Deutsch) (Bertram Kottmann) , copyright © 2011, (re)printed on this website with kind permission
  • ITA Italian (Italiano) (Ferdinando Albeggiani) , "Se riuscirò a impedire", copyright © 2009, (re)printed on this website with kind permission

Researcher for this text: Emily Ezust [Administrator]
Total word count: 206
Gentle Reminder

This website began in 1995 as a personal project by Emily Ezust, who has been working on it full-time without a salary since 2008. Our research has never had any government or institutional funding, so if you found the information here useful, please consider making a donation. Your help is greatly appreciated!
–Emily Ezust, Founder

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