Eight English poems

Song Cycle by Kees Schoonenbeek

1. Consolation  [sung text not yet checked]

Language: English 
O but there is wisdom
In what the sages said;
But stretch that body for a while
And lay down that head
Till I have told the sages
Where man is comforted.

How could passion run so deep
Had I never thought
That the crime of being born
Blackens all our lot?
But where the crime's committed
The crime can be forgot.

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2. Days  [sung text not yet checked]

Language: English 
What are days for?
 [ ... ]

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3. Night club

Language: English 
— This text is not currently
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4. A winter night  [sung text not yet checked]

Language: English 
It was a chilly winter's night;
  And frost was glitt'ring on the ground,
And evening stars were twinkling bright;
  And from the gloomy plain around
    Came no sound,
But where, within the wood-girt tow'r,
The churchbell slowly struck the hour;

As if that all of human birth
  Had risen to the final day,
And soaring from the wornout earth
  Were called in hurry and dismay,
    Far away ;
And I alone of all mankind
Were left in loneliness behind.

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5. In her only way  [sung text not yet checked]

Language: English 
When her need for you dies
 [ ... ]

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6. Water  [sung text not yet checked]

Language: English 
If I were called in
 [ ... ]

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7. At the party  [sung text not yet checked]

Language: English 
Unrhymed, unrhythmical, the chatter goes:
Yet no one hears his own remarks as prose.

Beneath each topic tunelessly discussed
The ground-bass is reciprocal mistrust.

The names in fashion shuttling to and fro
Yield, when deciphered, messages of woe.

You cannot read me like an open book.
I'm more myself than you will ever look.

Will no one listen to my little song?
Perhaps I shan't be with you very long.

A howl for recognition, shrill with fear,
Shakes the jam-packed apartment, but each ear
Is listening to its hearing, so none hear.

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8. The best  [sung text not yet checked]

Language: English 
What's the best thing in the world?
June-rose, by May-dew impearled;
Sweet south-wind, that means no rain;
Truth, not cruel to a friend;
Pleasure, not in haste to end;
Beauty, not self-decked and curled
Till its pride is over-plain;
Love, when, so, you're loved again.
What's the best thing in the world?
-- Something out of it, I think.

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Total word count: 430