Dance there upon the shore; What need have you to care For wind or water's roar? And tumble out your hair That the salt drops have wet; Being young you have not known The fool's triumph, nor yet Love lost as soon as won, Nor the best labourer dead And all the sheaves to bind. What need have you to dread The monstrous crying of wind?
The Wild Winds Weep
Song Cycle by Michael Murray
1. To a Child dancing in the Wind  [sung text not yet checked]
Authorship:
- by William Butler Yeats (1865 - 1939), "To a child dancing in the wind"
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Note: also sometimes titled "To a Child dancing upon the shore"First published in Poetry, Chicago (December 1912), revised 1913
Researcher for this text: Emily Ezust [Administrator]
2. Nightpiece  [sung text not yet checked]
Gaunt in gloom The pale stars their torches Enshrouded wave. Ghostfires from heaven's far verges faint illume Arches on soaring arches, Night's sindark nave. Seraphim The lost hosts awaken To service till In moonless gloom each lapses, muted, dim Raised when she has and shaken Her thurible. And long and loud To night's nave upsoaring A starknell tolls As the bleak incense surges, cloud on cloud, Voidward from the adoring Waste of souls.
Authorship:
- by James Joyce (1882 - 1941), "Nightpiece", appears in Pomes Penyeach, no. 9
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Available translations, adaptations or excerpts, and transliterations (if applicable):
- FRE French (Français) (Guy Laffaille) , "Nocturne", copyright © 2009, (re)printed on this website with kind permission
- GER German (Deutsch) (Bertram Kottmann) , "Nachtstück", copyright © 2014, (re)printed on this website with kind permission
Researcher for this text: Emily Ezust [Administrator]
3. Mad song  [sung text not yet checked]
The wild winds weep And the night is a-cold; Come hither, Sleep, And my griefs [infold]1: But lo! the morning peeps Over the eastern steeps, And the rustling birds of dawn The earth do scorn. Lo! to the vault Of paved heaven, With sorrow fraught My notes are driven: They strike the ear of night, Make weep the eyes of day; They make mad the roaring winds, And with tempests play. Like a fiend in a cloud, With howling woe, After night I do crowd, And with night will go; I turn my back to the east, From whence comforts have increas'd; For light doth seize my brain With frantic pain.
Authorship:
- by William Blake (1757 - 1827), "Mad song"
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Available translations, adaptations or excerpts, and transliterations (if applicable):
- CAT Catalan (Català) (Salvador Pila) , "Cançó esbojarrada", copyright © 2014, (re)printed on this website with kind permission
Note: said to have been written by Blake at the age of fourteen.
First published in Poetical Sketches, 1783
1 first published as "unfold" (Mitchell uses "unfold"); later changed to "infold"
Researcher for this text: Emily Ezust [Administrator]