Belovèd, thou hast brought me many flowers

Song Cycle by Libby Larsen (b. 1950)

1. Belovèd, thou hast brought me many flowers  [sung text not yet checked]

Language: English 
Belovèd, thou [hast brought]1 me many flowers
Plucked in [the]2 garden, all the summer through
And winter, and it seemed as if they grew
In [this]3 close room, nor missed the sun and showers.
So, in the like name of that love of ours,
Take back these thoughts which here unfolded too,
And which on warm and cold days I withdrew
From my heart's ground. Indeed, [those]4 beds and bowers
Be overgrown with bitter weeds and rue,
And wait thy weeding; yet here's eglantine,
Here's ivy! -- take them, as I used to do
Thy flowers, and keep them where they shall not pine.
Instruct thine eyes to keep their colours true,
And tell thy soul, their roots are left in mine.

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1 Carpenter: "did'st bring"
2 Carpenter: "this"
3 Carpenter: "my"
4 Carpenter: "these"

Researcher for this text: Emily Ezust [Administrator]

2. Liebeslied
 (Sung text)

Language: English 
How shall I withhold my soul so that
 [ ... ]

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3. Do you know  [sung text not yet checked]

Language: English 
Do you know, I would quietly
 [ ... ]

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Confirmed with Margaret Dows Herter Norton, Translations from the Poetry of Rainer Maria Rilke, W. W. Norton & Company, 1993, p.29


4. White World
 (Sung text)

Language: English 
The whole white world is ours, 
and the world, purple with rose-bays, 
bays, bush on bush, 
group, thicket, hedge and tree, 
dark islands in a sea 
of gray-green olive or wild white-olive, 
cut with the sudden cypress shafts, 
in clusters, two or three, 
or with one slender, single cypress-tree. 

Slid from the hill, 
as crumbling snow-peaks slide, 
citron on citron fill 
the valley, and delight 
waits till our spirits tire 
of forest, grove and bush 
and purple flower of the laurel-tree. 

 ...

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Researcher for this text: Emily Ezust [Administrator]

5. Music, when soft voices die  [sung text not yet checked]

Language: English 
Music, when soft voices die,	
Vibrates in the memory;
Odours, when sweet violets sicken,
Live within the sense they quicken.

Rose leaves, when the rose is dead,
Are heaped for the belovèd's bed;
And so [thy]1 thoughts, when thou art gone,
Love itself shall slumber on.

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

  • CZE Czech (Čeština) (Jaroslav Vrchlický) , "Sloky", Prague, J. Otto, first published 1901
  • FRE French (Français) (Guy Laffaille) , copyright © 2010, (re)printed on this website with kind permission
  • GER German (Deutsch) (Martin Stock) , "Musik, wenn leise Stimmen ersterben ...", copyright © 2002, (re)printed on this website with kind permission
  • GER German (Deutsch) [singable] (Bertram Kottmann) , copyright © 2018, (re)printed on this website with kind permission

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1 Bridge: "my"

Researcher for this page: Ted Perry

6. Go from me  [sung text not yet checked]

Language: English 
Go from me. Yet I feel that I shall stand
Henceforward in thy shadow. Nevermore
Alone upon the threshold of my door
Of individual life, I shall command
The uses of my soul, nor lift my hand
Serenely in the sunshine as before,
Without the sense of that which I forbore...
Thy touch upon the palm. The widest land
Doom takes to part us, leaves thy heart in mine
With pulses that beat double. What I do
And what I dream include thee, as the wine
Must taste of its own grapes. And when I sue
God for myself, He bears that name of thine,
And sees within my eyes, the tears of two.

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Researcher for this text: Emily Ezust [Administrator]
Total word count: 500