Five Songs

Song Cycle by Stanley Richard Bate (1913 - 1959)

?. Bahnhofstrasse [sung text not yet checked]

Language: English

The eyes that mock me sign the way
Whereto I pass at eve of day,

Grey way whose violet signals are
The trysting and the twining star.

Ah star of evil! star of pain!
Highhearted youth comes not again

Nor old heart's wisdom yet to know
The signs that mock me as I go.

Text Authorship:

by James Joyce (1882 - 1941), "Bahnhofstrasse", written 1918, appears in Pomes Penyeach, no. 12

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

FRE French (Français) (Guy Laffaille) , "Bahnhofstrasse", copyright © 2009, (re)printed on this website with kind permission

First published in Anglo-French Review, August 1919

Researcher for this text: Emily Ezust [Administrator]

?. Tutto è sciolto [sung text not yet checked]

Language: English

A birdless heaven, sea dusk, one lone star
Piercing the west,
As thou, fond heart, love's time, so faint, so far,
Rememberest.

The clear young eyes' soft look, the candid brow,
The fragrant hair,
Falling as through the silence falleth now
Dusk of the air.

Why then, remembering those shy
Sweet lures, repine
When the dear love she yielded with a sigh
Was all but thine?

Text Authorship:

by James Joyce (1882 - 1941), "Tutto è sciolto", appears in Pomes Penyeach, no. 5

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

FRE French (Français) (Guy Laffaille) , "Tutto è sciolto", copyright © 2009, (re)printed on this website with kind permission
GER German (Deutsch) (Bertram Kottmann) , copyright © 2014, (re)printed on this website with kind permission

First published in Poetry, May 1917

Researcher for this page: Ted Perry

?. Tilly [sung text not yet checked]

Language: English

He travels after a winter sun,
Urging the cattle along a cold red road,
Calling to them, a voice they know,
He drives his beasts above Cabra.

The voice tells them home is warm.
They moo and make brute music with their hoofs.
He drives them with a flowering branch before him,
Smoke pluming their foreheads.

Boor, bond of the herd,
Tonight stretch full by the fire!
I bleed by the black stream
For my torn bough!

Text Authorship:

by James Joyce (1882 - 1941), "Tilly", written 1904, appears in Pomes Penyeach, no. 1, first published 1927

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Researcher for this page: Barbara Miller

?. Watching the needleboats at San Saba [sung text not yet checked]

Language: English

I heard their young hearts crying
Loveward above the glancing oar
And heard the prairie grasses sighing:
No more, return no more!

O hearts, O sighing grasses,
Vainly your loveblown bannerets mourn!
No more will the wild wind that passes
Return, no more return.

Text Authorship:

by James Joyce (1882 - 1941), "Watching the needleboats at San Sabba", written 1912, appears in Pomes Penyeach, no. 2

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

First published in the Saturday Review, September 1913

Researcher for this page: Barbara Miller

Total word count: 241