Four Sonnets

Song Cycle by Jeraldine Saunders Herbison (b. 1941)

1. Night was Done  [sung text not yet checked]

Language: English 
Night was done. We rose and after
 [ ... ]

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Confirmed with Babette Deutsch and Avrahm Yarmolinsky, Modern Russian Poetry: An Anthology, New York : Huebsch, 1920, p.120


2. Time does not bring relief  [sung text not yet checked]

Language: English 
Time does not bring relief: you all have lied
Who told me time would ease me of my pain!
I miss him in the weeping of the rain:
I want him at the shrinking of the tide;
The old snows melt from ev'ry mountain side,
And last year's leaves are smoke in every lane;
But last year's bitter loving must remain
Heaped on my heart and my old thoughts abide.

There are a hundred places where I fear
To go, so with his memory they brim.
And entering with relief some quiet place
where never fell his foot or shone his face.
I say "There is no mem'ry of him here,"
And so stand stricken, so remembering him.

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3. If I Should Learn  [sung text not yet checked]

Language: English 
If I should learn, in some quite casual way,
    That you were gone, not to return again --
Read from the back-page of a paper, say,
    Held by a neighbor in a subway train,
How at the corner of this avenue
    And such a street (so are the papers filled)
A hurrying man -- who happened to be you --
    At noon to-day had happened to be killed,
I should not cry aloud -- I could not cry
    Aloud, or wring my hands in such a place --
I should but watch the station lights rush by
    With a more careful interest on my face,
Or raise my eyes and read with greater care
Where to store furs and how to treat the hair.

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4. There At Dawn

Language: English 
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Total word count: 302