To suffer woes which Hope thinks infinite; To forgive wrongs darker than death or night; To defy Power, which seems omnipotent; [To love, and bear; to hope till Hope creates From its own wreck the thing it contemplates;]3 Neither to change, nor falter, nor repent; This[, like thy glory, Titan,]1 is to be Good, great and joyous, beautiful and free; This is alone Life, Joy, Empire, and Victory.
Symphony no. 7 - Sinfonia Antartica
Symphony by Ralph Vaughan Williams (1872 - 1958)
1. Prelude  [sung text checked 1 time]
Authorship:
- by Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792 - 1822), no title, appears in Prometheus Unbound, excerpt
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View original text (without footnotes)1 omitted by Dyson and Vaughan Williams in Symphony #7
2 Dyson: "assume"
3 omitted by Vaughan Williams in Symphony #7
Research team for this page: Ahmed E. Ismail , Harry Joelson
2. Scherzo  [sung text checked 1 time]
There go the ships and there is that Leviathan whom thou has made to take his pastime therein.
Authorship:
- by Bible or other Sacred Texts , Psalm 24, verse 26
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Researcher for this text: Emily Ezust [Administrator]3. Landscape  [sung text checked 1 time]
Ye Ice-falls! ye that from the mountain’s brow
Adown enormous ravines slope amain —
Torrents, methinks, that heard a mighty voice,
And stopped at once amid their maddest plunge!
Motionless torrents! silent cataracts!
[Who made you glorious as the gates of Heaven
Beneath the keen full moon? Who bade the sun
Clothe you with rainbows? Who, with living flowers
Of loveliest blue, spread garlands at your feet? —
God! let the torrents, like a shout of nations,
Answer! and let the ice-plains echo, God!
God! sing ye meadow-streams with gladsome voice!
Ye pine-groves, with your soft and soul-like sounds!
And they too have a voice, yon piles of snow,
And in their perilous fall shall thunder, God!]1
[ ... ]
Authorship:
- by Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772 - 1834), "Hymn before sunrise, in the Vale of Chamouni"
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View original text (without footnotes)Confirmed with English Poetry II: From Collins to Fitzgerald, Volume XLI, The Harvard Classics, New York, P.F. Collier & Son, 1909-1914.
1 omitted by Vaughan Williams.Researcher for this text: Emily Ezust [Administrator]
4. Intermezzo  [sung text checked 1 time]
[ Busy old fool, unruly Sun,
Why dost thou thus,
Through windows, and through curtains, call on us ?
Must to thy motions lovers' seasons run ?
Saucy pedantic wretch, go chide
Late school-boys and sour prentices,
Go tell court-huntsmen that the king will ride,
Call country ants to harvest offices ;]1
Love, all alike, no season knows [nor]2 clime,
Nor hours, days, months, which are the rags of time.
[ ... ]
Authorship:
- by John Donne (1572 - 1631), "The sun rising"
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View original text (without footnotes)1 omitted by Vaughan Williams.
2 Vaughan Williams: "or"
Researcher for this text: Emily Ezust [Administrator]
5. Epilogue  [sung text checked 1 time]
I do not regret this journey... We took risks, we knew we took them, Things have come out against us, Therefore we have no cause for complaint.
Authorship:
- by Robert Falcon Scott (1868 - 1912)
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Note: from an entry in R. Scott's last journal written just before he died in Antarctica.
Researcher for this text: Emily Ezust [Administrator]