Three Songs, the words by Shelley

Song Cycle by Frederick Delius (1862 - 1934)

1. Indian love song [sung text checked 1 time]

I arise from dreams of thee
In the first sweet sleep of night,
When the winds are breathing low,
And the stars are shining bright:
I arise from dreams of thee,
And a spirit in my feet
[Has]1 led me - who knows how?
To thy chamber window, Sweet!

The wandering airs they faint
On the dark, the silent stream -
The Champak odours fail
Like sweet thoughts in a dream;
The nightingale's complaint,
It dies upon her heart; -
As I must die on thine,
O belovèd as thou art!

Oh lift me from the grass!
I die! I faint! I fail!
Let thy love in kisses rain
On my lips and eyelids pale.
My cheek is cold and white, alas!
My heart beats loud and fast; -
Oh! press it to thine own again,
Where it will break at last.

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

  • CZE Czech (Čeština) (Jaroslav Vrchlický) , "Řádky k indické melodii"
  • FRE French (Français) (Guy Laffaille) , copyright © 2017, (re)printed on this website with kind permission
  • GER German (Deutsch) (Bertram Kottmann) , "Indische Serenade", copyright © 2004, (re)printed on this website with kind permission

View original text (without footnotes)
1 Delius: "Hath"

Researcher for this text: Emily Ezust [Administrator]

2. Love's philosophy [sung text checked 1 time]

The [fountains mingle]1 with the River 
  And the Rivers with the Ocean,
The winds of Heaven mix for ever
  With a sweet emotion;
Nothing in the world is single;
  All things by a law divine
In one [another's being]2 mingle.
  Why not I with thine? -

See the mountains kiss high Heaven
  And the waves clasp one another;
No sister-flower would be forgiven
  If it disdained its brother;
And the [sunlight clasps]3 the earth
  And the moonbeams kiss the sea:
What [are all these kissings]4 worth
  If thou kiss not me?

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

View original text (without footnotes)
1 Gounod: "fountain mingles"
2 Delius: "spirit meet and"
3 Gounod: "sunbeams clasp"
4 Delius: "is all this sweet work"; Gounod: "are all these kisses"

Researcher for this text: Emily Ezust [Administrator]

3. To the Queen of my Heart [sung text checked 1 time]

Shall we roam, my love,
To the twilight grove,
When the moon is rising bright?
Oh, I'll whisper there, 
In the cool night air,
What I dare not in broad daylight!

I'll tell thee a part
Of the thoughts that start
To being when thou art nigh;
And thy beauty, more bright
Than the stars' soft light,
Shall seem as a weft from the sky.

When the pale moonbeam
On tower and stream
Sheds a flood of silver sheen,
How I love to gaze
As the cold ray strays
O'er thy face, my heart's throned queen!

Wilt thou roam with me
To the restless sea,
And linger upon the steep,
And list to the flow
Of the waves below
How they toss and roar and leap?

Those boiling waves,
And the storm that raves
At night o'er their foaming crest,
Resemble the strife
That, from earliest life,
The passions have waged in my breast.

Oh, come then, and rove
To the sea or the grove,
When the moon is rising bright,
And I'll whisper there,
In the cool night air,
What I dare not in broad daylight.

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This poem might have been written by James Augustus St. John and published as a hoax, according to The Complete Poetry of Percy Bysshe Shelley, Volume 1, ed. by Donald H. Reiman and Neil Fraistat, Baltimore and London, The John Hopkins University Press, 2000. A discussion of the evidence for this position appears in the section "Lost Works" at the very end of the book (no pagination could be seen in Google Books).


Researcher for this text: Emily Ezust [Administrator]
Total word count: 420