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Nature

Song Cycle by Ernst Bacon (1898 - 1990)

?. With the first Arbutus  [sung text not yet checked]

Language: English 
Pink, small, and punctual,
Aromatic, low,
Covert in April,
Candid in May,

Dear to the moss,
Known by the knoll,
Next to the robin
In every human soul.

Bold little beauty,
Bedecked with thee,
Nature forswears
Antiquity.

(With the first Arbutus.)

Text Authorship:

  • by Emily Dickinson (1830 - 1886), no title, appears in Poems of Emily Dickinson, first published 1890

Go to the general single-text view

Researcher for this text: Emily Ezust [Administrator]

?. The gentlest mother  [sung text not yet checked]

Language: English 
Nature, the gentlest mother
Impatient of no child,
The feeblest or the waywardest, -
Her admonition mild

In forest and the hill
By traveller is heard,
Restraining rampant squirrel
Or too impetuous bird.

How fair her conversation,
A summer afternoon, -
Her household, her assembly;
And when the sun goes down

Her voice among the aisles
Incites the timid prayer
Of the minutest cricket,
The most unworthy flower.

When all the children sleep
She turns as long away
As will suffice to light her lamps;
Then, bending from the sky,

With infinite affection
And infiniter care,
Her golden finger on her lip,
Wills silence everywhere.

Text Authorship:

  • by Emily Dickinson (1830 - 1886), no title, appears in Poems by Emily Dickinson, first published 1891

See other settings of this text.

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

  • CAT Catalan (Català) (Salvador Pila) , "Natura, la mare més gentil ", copyright © 2016, (re)printed on this website with kind permission
  • FRE French (Français) (Guy Laffaille) , "Nature, mère la plus gentille", copyright © 2008, (re)printed on this website with kind permission
  • GER German (Deutsch) (Bertram Kottmann) , copyright © 2013, (re)printed on this website with kind permission
  • ITA Italian (Italiano) (Ferdinando Albeggiani) , copyright © 2010, (re)printed on this website with kind permission

Researcher for this page: Ted Perry

?. There came a day  [sung text not yet checked]

Language: English 
There came a day at Summer's full
Entirely for me;
I thought that such were for the saints,
Where revelations be.

The sun, as common, went abroad,
The flowers, accustomed, blew,
As if no soul the solstice passed
That maketh all things new.

The time was scarce profaned by speech;
The symbol of a word
Was needless, as at sacrament
The wardrobe of our Lord.

Each was to each the sealed church,
Permitted to commune this time,
Lest we too awkward show
At supper of the Lamb.

The hours slid fast, as hours will,
Clutched tight by greedy hands;
So faces on two decks look back,
Bound to opposing lands.

And so, when all the time had failed,
Without external sound,
Each bound the other's crucifix,
We gave no other bond.

Sufficient troth that we shall rise -
Deposed, at length, the grave -
To that new marriage, justified
Through Calvaries of Love!

Text Authorship:

  • by Emily Dickinson (1830 - 1886), no title, appears in Poems of Emily Dickinson, first published 1890

See other settings of this text.

Researcher for this text: Emily Ezust [Administrator]

?. A spider
 (Sung text)

Language: English 
A spider sewed at night
Without a light
Upon an arc of white.
If ruff it was of dame
Or shroud of Gnome,
Himself, himself inform.
Of immortality
His strategy
Was physiognomy.

Text Authorship:

  • by Emily Dickinson (1830 - 1886), no title, appears in Poems by Emily Dickinson, first published 1891

See other settings of this text.

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

  • FRE French (Français) (Guy Laffaille) , copyright © 2017, (re)printed on this website with kind permission
  • GER German (Deutsch) (Walter A. Aue) , copyright © 2010, (re)printed on this website with kind permission
  • GER German (Deutsch) (Bertram Kottmann) , copyright © 2017, (re)printed on this website with kind permission
  • ITA Italian (Italiano) (Ferdinando Albeggiani) , copyright © 2009, (re)printed on this website with kind permission

Researcher for this text: Emily Ezust [Administrator]

?. A wind like a bugle
 (Sung text)

Language: English 
There came a wind like a bugle,
It quivered through the grass,
And a green chill upon the heat
So ominous did pass

We barred the windows and the doors
As from an emerald ghost
The doom's electric moccasin
That very instant passed.

On a strange mob of panting trees,
And fences fled away,
And rivers where the houses ran
The living looked that day,

The bell within the steeple wild,
The flying tidings whirled.
How much can come and much can go,
And yet abide the world!

Text Authorship:

  • by Emily Dickinson (1830 - 1886), no title, appears in Poems by Emily Dickinson, first published 1891

See other settings of this text.

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

  • CAT Catalan (Català) (Salvador Pila) , "Vingué un vent com un clarí", copyright © 2016, (re)printed on this website with kind permission
  • FRE French (Français) (Guy Laffaille) , "Alors vint un vent comme un clairon", copyright © 2008, (re)printed on this website with kind permission
  • GER German (Deutsch) (Bertram Kottmann) , copyright © 2015, (re)printed on this website with kind permission
  • ITA Italian (Italiano) (Ferdinando Albeggiani) , copyright © 2010, (re)printed on this website with kind permission

Researcher for this text: Emily Ezust [Administrator]

?. Winter afternoons  [sung text not yet checked]

Language: English 
There's a certain slant of light,
On winter afternoons,
That oppresses, like the weight
Of cathedral tunes.

Heavenly hurt it gives us;
We can find no scar,
But internal difference
Where the meanings are.

None may teach it anything,
'T is the seal, despair, -
An imperial affliction
Sent us of the air.

When it comes, the landscape listens,
Shadows hold their breath;
When it goes, 't is like the distance
On the look of death.

Text Authorship:

  • by Emily Dickinson (1830 - 1886), no title, appears in Poems of Emily Dickinson, first published 1890

See other settings of this text.

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

  • FRE French (Français) (Guy Laffaille) , copyright © 2016, (re)printed on this website with kind permission
  • GER German (Deutsch) (Bertram Kottmann) , no title, copyright © 2018, (re)printed on this website with kind permission

Researcher for this text: Emily Ezust [Administrator]

?. The mountain  [sung text not yet checked]

Language: English 
The mountain sat upon the plain
In his eternal chair,
His observation omnifold,
His inquest everywhere.

The seasons prayed around his knees,
Like children round a sire:
Grandfather of the days is he,
Of dawn the ancestor.

Text Authorship:

  • by Emily Dickinson (1830 - 1886), no title, appears in Poems of Emily Dickinson, first published 1890

See other settings of this text.

Researcher for this text: Emily Ezust [Administrator]

?. The Sea
 (Sung text)

Language: English 
As if the Sea should part
And show a further Sea --
And that -- a further -- and the Three
But a presumption be --

Of Periods of Seas --
Unvisited of Shores --
Themselves the Verge of Seas to be --
Eternity -- is Those --

Text Authorship:

  • by Emily Dickinson (1830 - 1886), no title, appears in Further poems of Emily Dickinson, first published 1929

See other settings of this text.

Researcher for this text: Emily Ezust [Administrator]

?. As if some little Arctic flower  [sung text not yet checked]

Language: English 
 As if some little Arctic flower,
 Upon the polar hem,
 Went wandering down the latitudes,
 Until it puzzled came
 To continents of summer,
 To firmaments of sun,
 To strange, bright crowds of flowers,
 And birds of foreign tongue!
 I say, as if this little flower
 To Eden wandered in -
 What then? Why, nothing,
 Only, your inference therefrom!

Text Authorship:

  • by Emily Dickinson (1830 - 1886), no title, appears in Poems of Emily Dickinson, first published 1890

Go to the general single-text view

Researcher for this text: Emily Ezust [Administrator]

?. The crickets sang  [sung text not yet checked]

Language: English 
The Crickets sang
And set the Sun
And Workmen finished one by one
Their Seam the Day upon.

The low Grass loaded with the Dew
The Twilight stood, as Strangers do
With Hat in Hand, polite and new
To stay as if, or go.

A Vastness, as a Neighbor, came,
A Wisdom, without Face, or Name,
A Peace, as Hemispheres at Home
And so the Night became.

Text Authorship:

  • by Emily Dickinson (1830 - 1886), no title, appears in Poems by Emily Dickinson, first published 1896

See other settings of this text.

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

  • FRE French (Français) (Guy Laffaille) , copyright © 2016, (re)printed on this website with kind permission
  • GER German (Deutsch) (Bertram Kottmann) , copyright © 2016, (re)printed on this website with kind permission

Researcher for this text: Emily Ezust [Administrator]
Total word count: 691
Gentle Reminder

This website began in 1995 as a personal project by Emily Ezust, who has been working on it full-time without a salary since 2008. Our research has never had any government or institutional funding, so if you found the information here useful, please consider making a donation. Your help is greatly appreciated!
–Emily Ezust, Founder

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