[Withouten]1 you No rose can grow; No leaf be green If never seen Your sweetest face; No bird have grace Or [power]2 to sing; Or anything Be kind, or fair, And you nowhere.
Two songs
Song Cycle by Ned Rorem (b. 1923)
Word count: 75
1. Little elegy [sung text checked 1 time]
Authorship
- by Elinor Wylie (1885 - 1928), "Little elegy", appears in Angels and Earthly Creatures: A Sequence of Sonnets, first published 1929 [author's text checked 1 time against a primary source]
See other settings of this text.
Available translations, adaptations or excerpts, and transliterations (if applicable):
- GER German (Deutsch) [singable] (Bertram Kottmann) , "Klagelied", copyright © 2011, (re)printed on this website with kind permission
1 Rorem: "Without"
2 Duke, Howe: "pow'r"
Research team for this text: Ted Perry , Garrett Medlock [Guest Editor]
2. On a singing girl [sung text checked 1 time]
Musa of the sea-blue eyes, Silver nightingale alone In a little coffin lies; A stone beneath a stone. She, whose song we loved the best, Is voiceless in a sudden Night: On your light limbs, O loveliest, May the dust be light!
Authorship
- by Elinor Wylie (1885 - 1928), "On a singing girl", appears in Black Armour: A Book of Poems, first published 1923 [author's text not yet checked against a primary source]