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Nocturnes

Song Cycle by Arnold Atkinson Cooke (1906 - 2005)

1. The moon  [sung text not yet checked]

Language: English 
And, [like]1 a dying lady, lean and pale,
Who totters forth, wrapp'd in a gauzy veil,
Out of her chamber, led by the insane
And feeble wanderings of her fading brain,
The moon arose up in the murky East,
A white and shapeless mass...

Art thou pale for weariness
Of climbing heaven and gazing on the earth,
Wandering companionless
Among the stars that have a different birth,
And ever changing, like a joyless eye
That finds no object worth its constancy?

Text Authorship:

  • by Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792 - 1822), "The waning moon", first published 1824

See other settings of this text.

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

  • CZE Czech (Čeština) (Jaroslav Vrchlický) , "Mizící měsíc", Prague, J. Otto, first published 1901

View original text (without footnotes)
1 Castelnuovo-Tedesco: "as"; further changes may exist not shown above.

Researcher for this text: Emily Ezust [Administrator]

2. Returning, we hear the larks
 (Sung text)

Language: English 
Sombre the night is.
And though we have our lives, we know
What sinister threat lurks there.

Dragging these anguished limbs, we only know
This poison-blasted track opens on our camp --
On a little safe sleep.

But hark! joy-joy-strange joy.
Lo! heights of night ringing with unseen larks
Music showering on our upturned list'ning faces.

Death could drop from the dark
As easily as song --
But song only dropped,
Like a blind man's dreams on the sand
By dangerous tides,
Like a girl's dark hair for she dreams no ruin lies there,
Or her kisses where a serpent hides.

Text Authorship:

  • by Isaac Rosenberg (1890 - 1918), "Returning, we hear the larks", written 1840

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Researcher for this text: Emily Ezust [Administrator]

3. River roses
 (Sung text)

Language: English 
By the Isar, in the twilight
We were wandering and singing,
By the Isar, in the evening
We climbed the huntsman's ladder and sat swinging
In the fir-tree overlooking the marshes,
While river met with river, and the ringing
Of their pale-green glacier water filled the evening.

By the Isar, in the twilight
We found the dark wild roses
Hanging red at the river; and simmering
Frogs were singing, and over the river closes
Was savour of ice and of roses; and glimmering
Fear was abroad. We whispered: "No one knows us.
Let it be as the snake disposes
Here in this simmering marsh."

Text Authorship:

  • by D. H. (David Herbert) Lawrence (1885 - 1930), "River roses"

See other settings of this text.

Researcher for this text: Emily Ezust [Administrator]

4. The owl
 (Sung text)

Language: English 
When cats run home and light is come
And dew is cold upon the ground,
And the far-off stream is dumb,
And the whirring sail goes round;
Alone and warming his five wits,
The white owl in the belfry sits.

When merry milkmaids click the latch,
And rarely smells the new-mown hay,
And the cock hath sung beneath the thatch
Twice or thrice his round-e-lay;
Alone and warming his five wits,
The white owl in the belfry sits.

Text Authorship:

  • by Alfred Tennyson, Lord (1809 - 1892), "Song -- The owl", appears in Poems, Chiefly Lyrical, first published 1830

See other settings of this text.

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

  • GER German (Deutsch) (Bertram Kottmann) , "Die weiße Uhl", copyright © 2007, (re)printed on this website with kind permission

Researcher for this text: Emily Ezust [Administrator]

5. The boat song
 (Sung text)

Language: English 
The boat is chafing at our long delay,
And we must leave too soon
The spicy sea-pinks and the inborne spray,
The tawny sands, the moon.

Keep us, O Thetis, on our western flight!
Watch from thy pearly throne
Our vessel, plunging deeper into night
To reach a land unknown.

Text Authorship:

  • by John Davidson (1857 - 1909), no title, from Plays, as part of "Scaramouch in Naxos", first published 1889

See other settings of this text.

Researcher for this text: Emily Ezust [Administrator]
Total word count: 414
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