Three Nocturnes

Song Cycle by Carlos Chávez (1899 - 1978)

1. Sonnet to Sleep  [sung text checked 1 time]

O soft embalmer of the still midnight!
  Shutting with careful fingers and benign
Our gloom-pleas'd eyes, embower'd from the light,
  Enshaded in forgetfulness divine;
O soothest Sleep! if so it please thee, close
  In midst of this thine hymn my willing eyes,
Or wait the "Amen" ere thy poppy throws
  Around my bed its lulling charities.
  Then save me, or the passèd day will shine
Upon my pillow, breeding many woes, -
  Save me from curious Conscience, that still [lords]1
Its strength for darkness, burrowing like [a]2 mole;
  Turn the key deftly in the oilèd wards,
And seal the hushèd Casket of my Soul.

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View original text (without footnotes)
First published in a Plymouth newspaper in 1838
1 changed to "hoards" by Richard Woodhouse, and kept by Keats in the second transcription. Chávez uses this version.
2 changed to "the" in Keats' second transcription. Chávez uses this as well.

Researcher for this text: Emily Ezust [Administrator]

1. To the Moon  [sung text checked 1 time]

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?

[ ... ]

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

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

Note: this is a fragment; the first two lines of a second stanza were published by W. M. Rossetti in 1870

Researcher for this text: Emily Ezust [Administrator]

3. So, we'll go no more a roving  [sung text checked 1 time]

So we'll go no more a-roving
  So late into the night,
Though the heart be [still]1 as loving,
  And the moon be still as bright.

For the sword outwears [the]2 sheath,
  And the soul wears out the breast,
And the heart [must pause to breathe]3,
  And Love itself have rest.

Though the night was made for loving,
  And the day returns too soon,
Yet we'll go no more a-roving
  By the light of the moon.

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

  • FRE French (Français) (Pierre Mathé) , copyright © 2019, (re)printed on this website with kind permission
  • GER German (Deutsch) (Walter A. Aue) , "So werden wir nicht mehr schweifen", copyright © 2010, (re)printed on this website with kind permission

View original text (without footnotes)
Included in a letter to Thomas Moore on February 28, 1817
See also Henley's "We'll go no more a-roving"
1 Armstrong, White: "ne'er"
2 Chávez: "its"
3 Armstrong, White: "itself must pause"

Researcher for this text: Emily Ezust [Administrator]
Total word count: 231