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Three Sonnets from "Fatal Interview"

Song Cycle by Miriam Gideon (1906 - 1996)

1.
 (Sung text)

Language: English 
Gone in good sooth you are;
Not even in dream you come.
As if the strictures of the light,
Laid on our glances to their disesteem,
Extended even to shadows and the night.
Extended even beyond that drowsy sill
Along whose galleries open to the skies
All maskers move unchallenged and at will,
Visor in hand, or hooded to the eyes.
To that pavilion the green sea in flood curves in,
And the slow dancers dance in foam;
I find again the pink camellia bud
On the wide step beside a silver comb... 
But it is scentless.
Up the marble stair I mount with pain,
Knowing you are not there.

Text Authorship:

  • by Edna St. Vincent Millay (1892 - 1950), appears in Fatal Interview, first published 1931

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Researcher for this text: Emily Ezust [Administrator]

2.
 (Sung text)

Language: English 
Moon is my sister, and how deep in love,
How drowned in love and weedily washed ashore,
There to be fretted by the drag and shove
At the tide's edge, I lie--these things and more:
Whose arm alone between me and the sand,
Whose voice alone, whose pitiful breath brought near,
Could thaw these nostrils and unlock this hand,
She could advise you, should you care to hear.
Small chance, however, in a storm so black,
A man will leave his friendly fire
For a drowned woman's sake, and bring her back
To drip and scatter shells upon the rug.
No one but Night, with tears on her dark face,
Watches beside me in this windy place.

Text Authorship:

  • by Edna St. Vincent Millay (1892 - 1950), no title, appears in Fatal Interview, first published 1931

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Researcher for this page: Victoria Brago

3.   [sung text not yet checked]

Language: English 
Moon, that against the lintel of the west
Your forehead lean until the gate be swung
Longing to leave the world and be at rest,
being worn with faring and no longer young,
Do you recall at all the Carian hill
where worn with loving, loving late you lay,
Halting the sun because you lingered still,
while wondering candles lit the Carian day?
Ah, if indeed this memory to your mind recall
some sweet employment, pity me,
that with the dawn must leave my love behind,
that even now the dawn's dim herald see!
I charge you, goddess, in the name of one
you loved as well, endure,
hold off the sun. 

Text Authorship:

  • by Edna St. Vincent Millay (1892 - 1950), appears in Fatal Interview, first published 1931

See other settings of this text.

Researcher for this text: Emily Ezust [Administrator]
Total word count: 339
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