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.
Songs for Ursula
Song Cycle by John Eaton (1935 - 2015)
1. Song  [sung text not yet checked]
Language: English
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
2. Under Ben Bulben V  [sung text not yet checked]
Language: English
Irish poets, earn your trade, Sing whatever is well made, Scorn the sort now growing up All out of shape from toe to top, Their unremembering hearts and heads Base-born products of base beds. Sing the peasantry, and then Hard-riding country gentlemen, The holiness of monks, and after Porter-drinkers' randy laughter; Sing the lords and ladies gay That were beaten into the clay Through seven heroic centuries; Cast your mind on other days That we in coming days may be Still the indomitable Irishry.
Authorship:
- by William Butler Yeats (1865 - 1939), no title, appears in Under Ben Bulben, no. 5
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First published in Irish Times, February 1939Researcher for this text: Emily Ezust [Administrator]
3. Song  [sung text not yet checked]
Language: English
Beloved, may your sleep be sound That have found it where you fed. What were all the world's alarms To mighty paris when he found Sleep upon a golden bed That first dawn in Helen's arms? Sleep, beloved, such a sleep As did that wild Tristram know When, the potion's work being done, Roe could run or doe could leap Under oak and beechen bough, Roe could leap or doe could run; Such a sleep and sound as fell Upon Eurotas' grassy bank When the holy bird, that there Accomplished his predestined will, From the limbs of Leda sank But not from her protecting care.
Authorship:
- by William Butler Yeats (1865 - 1939), "Lullaby", appears in The New Keepsake, first published 1931
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Researcher for this text: Emily Ezust [Administrator]4. Lines written upon Westminster Bridge  [sung text not yet checked]
Language: English
Earth has not anything to show more fair: Dull would he be of soul who could pass by A sight so touching in its majesty: This City now doth like a garment wear The beauty of the morning; silent, bare, Ships, towers, domes, theatres, and temples lie Open unto the fields, and to the sky; All bright and glittering in the smokeless air. Never did sun more beautifully steep In his first splendour valley, rock, or hill; Ne'er saw I, never felt, a calm so deep! The river glideth at his own sweet will: Dear God! the very houses seem asleep; And all that mighty heart is lying still!
Authorship:
- by William Wordsworth (1770 - 1850), "Composed upon Westminster Bridge, Sept. 3, 1803", from Poems, Volume I, first published 1807, later revised
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Researcher for this text: Emily Ezust [Administrator]Total word count: 368