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Love's Philosophy

Song Cycle by Paavo Heininen (b. 1938)

1. The cloths of heaven  [sung text not yet checked]

Language: English 
Had I the [heavens']1 embroidered cloths
Enwrought with golden and silver light
The blue and the dim and the dark cloths
Of night and light and the half-light,

I would spread the cloths under your feet:
But I, being poor, have only my dreams;
I have spread my dreams under your feet;
Tread softly because you tread on my dreams.

Text Authorship:

  • by William Butler Yeats (1865 - 1939), title 1: "Aedh wishes for the cloths of heaven", title 2: "He wishes for the cloths of heaven", appears in The Wind among the reeds, first published 1899

See other settings of this text.

Available translations, adaptations or excerpts, and transliterations (if applicable):

  • FRE French (Français) (Pierre Mathé) , copyright © 2015, (re)printed on this website with kind permission
  • HUN Hungarian (Magyar) (Tamás Rédey) , copyright © 2015, (re)printed on this website with kind permission

View original text (without footnotes)
Original title is "Aedh wishes for the cloths of heaven"; revised 1906; re-titled "He wishes for the cloths of heaven".

Confirmed with W. B. Yeats, Later Poems, Macmillan and Co., London, 1926, page 45.

1 Gurney: "Heaven's"

Researcher for this text: Emily Ezust [Administrator]

2. Love's philosophy  [sung text not yet checked]

Language: English 
The [fountains mingle]1 with the River 
  And the Rivers with the Ocean,
The winds of Heaven mix for ever
  With a sweet emotion;
Nothing in the world is single;
  All things by a law divine
In one [another's being]2 mingle.
  Why not I with thine? -

See the mountains kiss high Heaven
  And the waves clasp one another;
No sister-flower would be forgiven
  If it disdained its brother;
And the [sunlight clasps]3 the earth
  And the moonbeams kiss the sea:
What [are all these kissings]4 worth
  If thou kiss not me?

Text Authorship:

  • by Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792 - 1822), "Love's philosophy"

See other settings of this text.

Available translations, adaptations or excerpts, and transliterations (if applicable):

  • CZE Czech (Čeština) (Jaroslav Vrchlický) , "Filosofie lásky"
  • FRE French (Français) (Guy Laffaille) , copyright © 2009, (re)printed on this website with kind permission
  • GER German (Deutsch) (Adolf Strodtmann) , "Philosophie der Liebe", appears in Lieder- und Balladenbuch amerikanischer und englischer Dichter der Gegenwart, first published 1862
  • POL Polish (Polski) (Kazimierz Przerwa-Tetmajer) , "Filozofia miłości"

View original text (without footnotes)
1 Gounod: "fountain mingles"
2 Delius: "spirit meet and"
3 Gounod: "sunbeams clasp"
4 Delius: "is all this sweet work"; Gounod: "are all these kisses"

Researcher for this text: Emily Ezust [Administrator]

3. True and false compare  [sung text not yet checked]

Language: English 
My mistress' eyes are nothing like the sun;
Coral is far more red, than her lips red;
If snow be white, why then her breasts are dun;
If hairs be wires, black wires grow on her head.
I have seen roses damask'd, red and white,
But no such roses see I in her cheeks;
And in some perfumes is there more delight
Than in the breath that from my mistress reeks.
I love to hear her speak, yet well I know
That music hath a far more pleasing sound;
I grant I never saw a goddess go, --
My mistress, when she walks, treads on the ground:
  And yet, by heaven, I think my love as rare
  As any she belied with false compare.

Text Authorship:

  • by William Shakespeare (1564 - 1616), no title, appears in Sonnets, no. 130

See other settings of this text.

Available translations, adaptations or excerpts, and transliterations (if applicable):

  • FRE French (Français) (François-Victor Hugo) , no title, appears in Sonnets de Shakespeare, no. 130, first published 1857
  • ITA Italian (Italiano) (Ferdinando Albeggiani) , "Gli occhi della mia donna non sono come il sole", copyright © 2009, (re)printed on this website with kind permission

Researcher for this text: Emily Ezust [Administrator]
Total word count: 278
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