Never seek to tell thy love Love that never told [can]1 be; For the gentle wind does move Silently, invisibly. I told my love, I told my love, I told her all my heart, [Trembling, cold, in ghastly fears]2 -- Ah, she [doth]3 depart. Soon as she was gone from me [A traveller came by]4 Silently, invisibly -- [He took her with a sigh]5.
Echo's songs
Song Cycle by Daron Aric Hagen (b. 1961)
1. Never pain to tell thy love [sung text not yet checked]
Language: English
Text Authorship:
- by William Blake (1757 - 1827), "Love's Secret"
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View original text (without footnotes)1 Stöhr: "shall"
2 Stöhr: "Trembling between hope and fear"
3 Stöhr: "did"
4 Stöhr: "A boy chanced going by"
5 Leoni: "O, was no deny"
Research team for this page: Emily Ezust [Administrator] , Johann Winkler
2. I am not yours [sung text not yet checked]
Language: English
I am not yours, not lost in you, Not lost, although I long to be Lost as a candle lit at noon, Lost as a snowflake in the sea. You love me, and I find you still A spirit beautiful and bright, Yet I am I, who long to be Lost as a light is lost in light. Oh plunge me deep in love -- put out My senses, leave me deaf and blind, Swept by the tempest of your love, A taper in a rushing wind.
Text Authorship:
- by Sara Teasdale (1884 - 1933), "I am not yours"
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Researcher for this text: Emily Ezust [Administrator]3. A dream within a dream [sung text not yet checked]
Language: English
Take this kiss upon the brow! And, in parting from you now, Thus much let me avow - You are not wrong, who deem That my days have been a dream; Yet if hope has flown away In a night, or in a day, In a vision, or in none, Is it therefore the less gone? All that we see or seem Is but a dream within a dream. I stand amid the roar Of a surf-tormented shore, And I hold within my hand Grains of the golden sand- How few! yet how they creep Through my fingers to the deep, While I weep - while I weep! O God! can I not grasp Them with a tighter clasp? O God! can I not save One from the pitiless wave? Is all that we see or seem But a dream within a dream?
Text Authorship:
- by Edgar Allan Poe (1809 - 1849), "A dream within a dream"
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Researcher for this text: Emily Ezust [Administrator]4. Echo's song [sung text not yet checked]
Language: English
Slow, slow, fresh fount, keep time with my salt tears:
[Yet slower, yet; O faintly,]1 gentle springs:
List to the heavy part the music bears,
Woe weeps out her [division]2 when she sings.
Droop herbs and flowers,
Fall grief in showers,
Our [beauties are]3 not ours;
[O, I could still,]4
Like melting snow upon some craggy hill,
[Drop, drop, drop, drop,]5
Since [nature's]6 pride is, now, a withered daffodil.
Text Authorship:
- by Ben Jonson (1572 - 1637), from Cynthia's Revels, Act I Scene 2.
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View original text (without footnotes)1 Horsley: "O slower yet, O fainter"
2 Horsley: "division"
3 Horsley: "beauty is"
4 Quilter: "Or I could still"; Horsley: "O could I still"
5 Horsley: "Fall down, fall down."
6 Horsley: "summer's"
Researcher for this page: Ted Perry
5. I am Rose [sung text not yet checked]
Language: English
I am Rose my eyes are blue. I am Rose who are you? I am Rose and when I sing I am Rose like anything.
Text Authorship:
- by Gertrude Stein (1874 - 1946), no title, appears in The World Is Round, in There, first published 1939
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Researcher for this page: John Versmoren6. Lost [sung text not yet checked]
Language: English
Desolate and lone All night long on the lake Where fog trails and mist creeps, The whistle of a boat Calls and cries unendingly, Like some lost child In tears and trouble Hunting the harbor's breast And the harbor's eyes.
Text Authorship:
- by Carl Sandburg (1878 - 1967), "Lost", appears in Chicago Poems, first published 1916
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Researcher for this text: Emily Ezust [Administrator]7. Why did you go? [sung text not yet checked]
Language: English
why did you go little fourpaws? you forgot to shut your big eyes. where did you go? like little kittens are all the leaves which open in the rain. little kittens who are called spring, is what we stroke maybe asleep? do you know?or maybe did something go away ever so quietly when we weren't looking.
Text Authorship:
- by E. E. (Edward Estlin) Cummings (1894 - 1962), no title, appears in XLI Poems, in 2. Chansons innocentes, no. 1, first published 1920
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Confirmed with E. E. Cummings, Tulips and Chimneys, New York: Liveright, 1976, in Chansons Innocentes, page 27.
First published as "V" in Seven Poems, in The Dial, Vol. 68, No. 1, January 1920. Not included in the first edition of Tulips and Chimneys, but included in XLI Poems in 1925.
Research team for this page: Emily Ezust [Administrator] , Poom Andrew Pipatjarasgit [Guest Editor]
8. Since you went away
Language: English
After you were gone [ ... ]
Text Authorship:
- by Kenneth Rexroth (1905 - 1982), copyright ©
Based on:
- a text in Chinese (中文) by Shu Chi'siang [text unavailable]
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This text may be copyright, so we will not display it until we obtain permission to do so or discover it is public-domain.9. Thou wouldst be loved [sung text not yet checked]
Language: English
Thou wouldst be loved? -- then let thy heart
From its present pathway part not!
Being everything which now thou art,
Be nothing which thou art not.
So with the world thy gentle ways,
Thy grace, thy more than beauty,
Shall be an endless theme of praise,
And love -- a simple duty.
Text Authorship:
- by Edgar Allan Poe (1809 - 1849), "To F--s S. O--d", written 1835, appears in The Raven and Other Poems, first published 1845
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Note: "F--s S. O--d" is Frances Sargent Osgood.Researcher for this text: Emily Ezust [Administrator]
10. Look down, fair moon [sung text not yet checked]
Language: English
Look down, fair moon and bathe this scene, Pour softly down night's nimbus floods, on faces ghastly, swollen, purple; On the dead, on their backs, with [their]1 arms toss'd wide, Pour down your unstinted nimbus, sacred moon.
Text Authorship:
- by Walt Whitman (1819 - 1892), "Look down, fair moon", appears in Drum Taps, first published 1965
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View original text (without footnotes)Confirmed with Drum-Taps, ed. by Matt Cohen, Ed Folsom, & Kenneth M. Price, The Walt Whitman Archive
1 omitted by Rands.Research team for this page: Emily Ezust [Administrator] , Joost van der Linden [Guest Editor]
11. The mild mother
Language: English
— This text is not currently
in the database but will be added
as soon as we obtain it. —
Total word count: 616