Three Songs of Elegy

Song Cycle by Michael M. Horvit (b. 1932)

?. Ample make this bed [sung text not yet checked]

Language: English

Ample make this Bed --
Make this Bed with Awe --
In it wait till Judgment break
Excellent and Fair.

Be its Mattress straight --
Be its Pillow round --
Let no Sunrise' yellow noise
Interrupt this Ground --

Text Authorship:

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

See other settings of this text.

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

FRE French (Français) (Guy Laffaille) , copyright © 2009, (re)printed on this website with kind permission
GER German (Deutsch) (Bertram Kottmann) , copyright © 2018, (re)printed on this website with kind permission
ITA Italian (Italiano) (Ferdinando Albeggiani) , "Rendi spazioso questo letto", copyright © 2008, (re)printed on this website with kind permission

Researcher for this text: Emily Ezust [Administrator]

?. I felt a funeral in my brain [sung text not yet checked]

Language: English

I felt a funeral in my brain,
  And mourners, to and fro,
Kept treading, treading, till it seemed
  That sense was breaking through.

And when they all were seated,
  A service like a drum
Kept beating, beating, till I thought
  My mind was going numb.

And then I heard them lift a box,
  And creak across my soul
With those same boots of lead, again.
  Then space began to toll

As all the heavens were a bell,
  And Being but an ear,
And I and silence some strange race,
  Wrecked, solitary, here.

Text Authorship:

by Emily Dickinson (1830 - 1886), no title, appears in Poems: Third Series, in 4. Time and Eternity, no. 30, first published 1896

See other settings of this text.

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

CAT Catalan (Català) (Salvador Pila) , "Vaig sentir un funeral al meu cap", copyright © 2016, (re)printed on this website with kind permission
FRE French (Français) (Guy Laffaille) , copyright © 2008, (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 © 2015, (re)printed on this website with kind permission
ITA Italian (Italiano) (Ferdinando Albeggiani) , copyright © 2011, (re)printed on this website with kind permission

Confirmed with Poems by Emily Dickinson. Third Series, ed by Mabel Loomis Todd, Boston: Roberts Brothers, 1896.

Note: a later edition removes the word "again" from stanza 3, line 3 and adds the following stanza to the end:

And then a plank in reason, broke,
And I dropped down and down —
And hit a world at every plunge,
And finished knowing — then —

Researcher for this text: Emily Ezust [Administrator]

?. I felt a cleavage in my mind [sung text not yet checked]

Language: English

I felt a [clearing]¹ in my mind
  As if my brain had split;
I tried to match it, seam by seam,
  But could not make them fit.

The thought behind I strove to join
  Unto the thought before,
But sequence ravelled out of reach
  Like balls upon a floor.

Text Authorship:

by Emily Dickinson (1830 - 1886), "The Lost Thought", appears in Poems: Third Series, in 1. Life, no. 23, appears in Poems: Third Series, in 1. Life, no. 23, first published 1896

See other settings of this text.

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

View text without footnotes

Confirmed with Poems by Emily Dickinson. Third Series, ed by Mabel Loomis Todd, Boston: Roberts Brothers, 1896.

¹ Clyne: "cleaving"

Researcher for this text: Emily Ezust [Administrator]

Total word count: 176