Three Impressions

Song Cycle by Arthur Benjamin (1893 - 1960)

?. Calm sea and mist  [sung text not yet checked]

Language: English 
    (Towards evening)

The slow heave of the sleeping sea
    With pulse-like motion swells and falls,
    And drowsily a stray gull calls
The very wail of melancholy;
    All day the moveless mist has slept
    On the same bosom east winds swept:

No breath of change in the grey mist,
Save just a dream of amethyst.

Text Authorship:

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Researcher for this text: Emily Ezust [Administrator]

?. Hedgerow  [sung text not yet checked]

Language: English 
The wintry wolds are white; the wind
    Seems frozen; in the shelter'd nooks
    The sparrows shiver; the black rooks
Wheel homeward where the elms behind
    The manor stand; at the field's edge
    The redbreasts in the blackthorn hedge

Sit close and under snowy eaves
The shrewmice sleep 'mid nested leaves.

Text Authorship:

  • by William Sharp (1855 - 1905), "A winter hedgerow", appears in Poems, first published 1912

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Researcher for this text: Emily Ezust [Administrator]

?. The wasp  [sung text not yet checked]

Language: English 
Where the ripe pears droop heavily
    The yellow wasp hums loud and long
    His hot and drowsy autumn song:
A yellow flame he seems to be,
    When darting suddenly from high
    He lights where fallen peaches lie

Yellow and black, this tiny thing's
A tiger-soul on elfin wings.

Text Authorship:

  • by William Sharp (1855 - 1905), as Fiona Macleod, "The wasp", appears in Poems, first published 1912

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Researcher for this text: Emily Ezust [Administrator]
Total word count: 153