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Four Reveries

Song Cycle by William Hawley (b. 1950)

1. Echo  [sung text not yet checked]

Language: English 
Come to me in the silence of the night;
Come in the speaking silence of a dream;
Come with soft rounded cheeks and eyes as bright
As sunlight on a stream;
Come back in tears,
O memory, hope, love of finished years. 

Oh dream how sweet, too sweet, too bitter sweet,
Whose [wakening]1 should have been in Paradise,
Where souls brimfull of love abide and meet;
Where [thirsting]2 longing eyes
Watch the slow door
That opening, letting in, lets out no more. 

Yet come to me in dreams, that I may live
My very life again though cold in death:
Come back to me in dreams, that I may give
Pulse for pulse, breath for breath:
Speak low, lean low,
As long ago, my love, how long ago!

Text Authorship:

  • by Christina Georgina Rossetti (1830 - 1894), "Echo", written 1854

See other settings of this text.

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

  • GER German (Deutsch) (Bertram Kottmann) , "Echo", copyright © 2005, (re)printed on this website with kind permission

View original text (without footnotes)
1 Zaimont: "waking"
2 Zaimont: "thirsty"
Note: the text inspired the orchestral work "Symphonic Rhapsody" by Ralph Vaughan Williams, 1904

Researcher for this text: Emily Ezust [Administrator]

2. Remembrance  [sung text not yet checked]

Language: English 
Swifter far than summers flight -
Swifter far than youth's delight -
Swifter far than happy night,
Art thou come and gone -
As the earth when leaves are dead,
As the night when sleep is sped,
As the heart when joy is fled,
I am left lone, alone.

The swallow summer comes again -
The owlet night resumes her reign -
But the wild-swan youth is fain
To fly with thee, false as thou. -
My heart each day desires the morrow;
Sleep itself is turned to sorrow;
Vainly would my winter borrow
Sunny leaves from any bough.

[ ... ]

Text Authorship:

  • by Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792 - 1822), "Remembrance"

See other settings of this text.

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

  • CZE Czech (Čeština) (Jaroslav Vrchlický) , "Upomínka", Prague, J. Otto, first published 1901
  • HUN Hungarian (Magyar) (Dezső Kosztolányi) , "Síró dalocska"

Researcher for this text: Emily Ezust [Administrator]

3. My River Runs to Thee  [sung text not yet checked]

Language: English 
My river runs to thee:
Blue sea, wilt welcome me?

My river waits reply.
Oh sea, look graciously!

I'll fetch thee brooks
From spotted nooks, -

Say, sea, take me!

Text Authorship:

  • by Emily Dickinson (1830 - 1886), "The outlet", appears in Poems of Emily Dickinson, first published 1890

See other settings of this text.

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

  • GER German (Deutsch) (Bertram Kottmann) , no title, copyright © 2018, (re)printed on this website with kind permission
  • ITA Italian (Italiano) (Ferdinando Albeggiani) , copyright © 2012, (re)printed on this website with kind permission

Researcher for this text: Emily Ezust [Administrator]

4. Meeting at Night  [sung text not yet checked]

Language: English 
The gray sea and the long black land;
And the yellow half-moon large and low;
And the startled little waves that leap
In fiery ringlets from their sleep,
As I gain the cove with pushing prow,
And quench its speed i' the slushy sand.

Then a mile of warm sea-scented beach;
Three fields to cross till a farm appears;
A tap on the pane, the quick sharp scratch
And blue spurt of a lighted match,
And a voice less loud, through its joys and fears,
Than the two hearts beating each to each!

Text Authorship:

  • by Robert Browning (1812 - 1889), "Meeting at Night", appears in Bells and Pomegranates, Volume VII, first published 1845

See other settings of this text.

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

  • GER German (Deutsch) (Richard Flatter) , "Nächtliche Fahrt", appears in Die Fähre, Englische Lyrik aus fünf Jahrhunderten, first published 1936

Researcher for this text: Emily Ezust [Administrator]
Total word count: 388
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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