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Banal Sojourn

Song Cycle by Robin Holloway (b. 1943)

?. Gubbinal  [sung text not yet checked]

Language: English 
That strange flower, the sun,
Is just what you say.
Have it your way.

The world is ugly,
And the people are sad.

That tuft of jungle feathers,
That animal eye,
Is just what you say.

That savage of fire,
That seed,
Have it your way.

The world is ugly,
And the people are sad

Text Authorship:

  • by Wallace Stevens (1879 - 1955), "Gubbinal", appears in Harmonium

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Researcher for this text: Emily Ezust [Administrator]

?. Banal sojourn  [sung text not yet checked]

Language: English 
Two wooden tubs of blue hydrangeas stand at the foot of the stone steps.
The sky is a blue gum streaked with rose. the trees are black.
The grackles crack their throats of bone in the smooth air.
Moisture and heat have swollen the garden into a slum of bloom.
Pardie! summer is like a fat beast, sleepy in mildew,
Our old bane, green and bloated, serene, who cries,
'That bliss of stars, that princox of evening heaven!' reminding of seasons,
When radiance came running down, slim through the bareness.
And so it is one damns that green shade at the bottom of the land.
For who can care at the wigs despoiling the Satan ear?
And who does not seek the sky unfuzzed, soaring to the princox?
One has a malady, here, a malady. One feels a malady.

Text Authorship:

  • by Wallace Stevens (1879 - 1955), "Banal sojourn", appears in Harmonium, first published 1917

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Researcher for this text: Emily Ezust [Administrator]
Total word count: 194
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