In Fields Where Roses Fade

Song Cycle by Melinda Bargreen

1. Shall I compare thee to a summer's day [sung text not yet checked]

Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?
Thou art more lovely and more temperate:
Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May,
And summer's lease hath all too short a date:
[Sometime]1 too hot the eye of heaven shines,
And often is his gold complexion dimm'd;
And every fair from fair sometime declines,
By chance or nature's changing course untrimm'd;
But thy eternal summer shall not fade
Nor lose possession of that fair thou ow'st;
Nor shall Death brag thou wander'st in his shade,
When in eternal lines to [time thou growest]2:
  [So long]3 as men [can]4 breathe or eyes can see,
  So long lives this, and this gives life to thee.

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1 Wilkinson: "Sometimes"
2 Aikin: "times thou grow'st"
3 Wilkinson: "As long"
4 Aikin: "shall"

Research team for this text: Emily Ezust [Administrator] , Johann Winkler

2. Ozymandias  [sung text not yet checked]

I met a traveller from an antique land
Who said: Two vast [and]1 trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert. Near them, on the sand,
Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown,
And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command,
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive (stamped on these lifeless things,)
The hand that mocked them and the heart that fed:
And on the pedestal these words appear:
"[My name is]2 Ozimandias, king of kings:
Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!"
Nothing besides remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away.

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Confirmed with The Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley, Volume 2, London, George Bell & Sons, 1892, page 294.

1 omitted by Manno.
2 Manno: "I am"

Researcher for this text: Emily Ezust [Administrator]

3. The world is too much with us [sung text not yet checked]

The world is too much with us; late and soon,
Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers;
Little we see in Nature that is ours;
We have given our hearts away, a sordid boon!
This Sea that bares her bosom to the moon;
The winds that will be howling at all hours,
And are up-gathered now like sleeping flowers;
For this, for everything, we are out of tune;
It moves us not. -- Great God! I'd rather be
A Pagan suckled in a creed outworn;
So might I, standing on this pleasant lea;
Have glimpses that would make me less forlorn;
Have sight of Proteus rising from the sea;
Or hear old Triton blow his wreathed horn.

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Researcher for this text: Ton van der Steenhoven

4. With rue my heart is laden [sung text not yet checked]

With rue my heart is laden
 For golden friends I had,
For many a rose-lipt maiden
 And many a lightfoot lad.

By brooks too broad for leaping
 The lightfoot boys are laid;
The rose-lipt girls are sleeping 
 In fields where roses fade.

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Researcher for this text: Emily Ezust [Administrator]

5. Loveliest of trees, the cherry now [sung text not yet checked]

Loveliest of trees, the cherry now
Is hung with bloom along the bough,
And stands about the woodland ride
Wearing white for Eastertide.

Now, of my threescore years and ten,
Twenty will not come again,
And take from seventy [springs]1 a score,
It only leaves me fifty more.

And since to look at things in bloom
Fifty springs are little room,
About the [woodlands]2 I will go
To see the cherry hung with snow.

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  • FRE French (Français) (Patricia Dillard Eguchi) , copyright © 2018, (re)printed on this website with kind permission
  • HEB Hebrew (עברית) (Max Mader) , "היפה בעצים", copyright © 2014, (re)printed on this website with kind permission

View original text (without footnotes)
1 Manton: "years"
2 Steele: "woodland"

Researcher for this text: Emily Ezust [Administrator]

6. anyone lived in a pretty how town [sung text not yet checked]

anyone lived in a pretty how town
 [ ... ]

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Total word count: 686