Echo's songs

Song Cycle by Daron Aric Hagen (b. 1961)

Word count: 605

1. Never pain to tell thy love  [sung text not yet checked]

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.

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1 Stöhr: "shall"
2 Stöhr: "Trembling between hope and fear"
3 Stöhr: "did"
4 Stöhr: "A boy chanced going by"

Research team for this text: Emily Ezust [Administrator] , Johann Winkler

2. I am not yours  [sung text not yet checked]

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.

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Researcher for this text: Emily Ezust [Administrator]

3. A dream within a dream  [sung text not yet checked]

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?

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Researcher for this text: Emily Ezust [Administrator]

4. Echo's song  [sung text not yet checked]

 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.

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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 text: Ted Perry

5. I am Rose  [sung text not yet checked]

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.

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Researcher for this text: John Versmoren

6. Lost  [sung text not yet checked]

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.

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Researcher for this text: Emily Ezust [Administrator]

7. Why did you go?  [sung text not yet checked]

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.

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Confirmed with E. E. Cummings, Tulips and Chimneys, in Chansons Innocentes, New York: Liveright, 1976, page 27.

First published as "V" in Seven Poems, in The Dial, Vol. 68, No. 1, January 1920

Research team for this text: Emily Ezust [Administrator] , Poom Andrew Pipatjarasgit [Guest Editor]

8. Since you went away  [sung text checked 1 time]

After you were gone
 [ ... ]

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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]

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.

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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]

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.

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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 text: Emily Ezust [Administrator] , Joost van der Linden [Guest Editor]

11. The mild mother 

— This text is not currently
in the database but will be added
as soon as we obtain it. —

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  • by Anonymous / Unidentified Author