Six Seasonal Songs for High Voice and Piano

by Roger S. Keele (b. 1954)

1. Fly, My Kite of Blue

Language: English 
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2. Secret Love

Language: English 
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3. The Summer Fly  [sung text not yet checked]

Language: English 
Busy, curious, thirsty Fly,
[Gently drink, and]1 drink as I;
Freely welcome to my Cup,
Could'st thou sip, and sip it up;
Make the most of Life you may,
Life is short and wears away.

[Just alike, both]2 mine and thine,
[Hasten]3 quick to their Decline;
Thine's a Summer, mine's no more,
Though repeated to threescore;
Threescore Summers when they're gone,
Will appear as short as one.

Text Authorship:

  • by William Oldys (1696 - 1761), "The Fly", subtitle: "An Anacreontick"

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Confirmed with A Literary Antiquary. Memoir of William Oldys, Esq., London, Spottiswoode & Co., 1862, page xiii

1 Bennett, Hindemith: "Drink with me and"
2 Hindemith: "Both alike are"
3 Hindemith: "Hastening"

Researcher for this text: Emily Ezust [Administrator]

4. Spring and Fall: To A Young Child  [sung text not yet checked]

Language: English 
  to a young child

Margaret, are you grieving,
Over Goldengrove unleaving?
Leaves, like the things of man, you
With your fresh thoughts care for, can you?
Ah! as the heart grows older
It will come to such sights colder
By & by, nor spare a sigh
Though worlds of wanwood leafmeal lie;
And yet you will weep & know why.
Now no matter, child, the name:
Sorrow's springs are the same.
Nor mouth had, no nor mind, expressed
What heart heard of, ghost guessed:
It is the blight man was born for,
It is Margaret you mourn for.

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5. The Darkling Thrush  [sung text not yet checked]

Language: English 
I leaned upon a coppice gate
  When frost was specter-gray,
And winter's dregs made desolate
  The weakening eye of day.
The tangled bine-stems scored the sky
  Like strings [from]1 broken lyres,
And all mankind that haunted nigh
  Had sought their household fires.

The land's sharp features seemed to be
  The Century's corpse outleant;
His crypt the cloudy canopy,
  The wind his death-lament.
The ancient pulse of germ and birth
  Was shrunken hard and dry,
And every spirit upon earth
  Seemed fervorless as I.

At once a voice [burst forth]2 among
  The bleak twigs overhead
In full-hearted evensong
  Of joy illimited;
An aged thrush, frail, gaunt and small,
  In blast-beruffled plume,
Had chosen thus to fling his soul
  Upon the growing gloom.

So little cause for carolings
  Of such ecstatic sound
Was written on terrestrial things
  Afar or nigh around,
That I could think there trembled through
  His happy good-night air
Some blessed hope, whereof he knew
  And I was unaware.

Text Authorship:

  • by Thomas Hardy (1840 - 1928), "By the century's deathbed", December 31st, 1899

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

  • GER German (Deutsch) [singable] (Walter A. Aue) , "Die dunkelnde Drossel (Am letzten Tag des 19. Jahrhunderts)", copyright © 2010, (re)printed on this website with kind permission

View original text (without footnotes)
First published in Graphic, 1900, rev. 1902
1 Hoiby, Weir: "of"
2 Hoiby, Weir: "arose"

Researcher for this text: Emily Ezust [Administrator]

6. Orion

Language: English 
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Total word count: 325