The Joyce Book

Song Cycle

Translated to:

French (Français) — Treize à la douzaine

1. Tilly
 (Sung text)

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:

Set by Ernest John Moeran (1894 - 1950), R. 105 (c1931), published 1933 [ high voice and piano ], Sylvan Press

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

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

Researcher for this page: Barbara Miller

2. Watching the needleboats at San Saba
 (Sung text)

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:

Set by Arnold Edward Trevor Bax, Sir (1883 - 1953), published 1933 [ voice and piano ]

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

  • FRE French (Français) (Guy Laffaille) , "En regardant les yoles à San Sabba", copyright © 2009, (re)printed on this website with kind permission
  • GER German (Deutsch) (Bertram Kottmann) , "Betrachtung der Ruderer vor San Sabba", copyright © 2014, (re)printed on this website with kind permission

First published in the Saturday Review, September 1913
Researcher for this page: Barbara Miller

3. A flower given to my daughter
 (Sung text)

Language: English 
Frail the white rose and frail are
Her hands that gave
Whose soul is sere and paler
Than time's wan wave.

Rosefrail and fair-- yet frailest
A wonder wild
In gentle eyes thou veilest,
My blueveined child.

Text Authorship:

Set by Albert Roussel (1869 - 1937), 1931, published 1933, first performed 1932 [ high voice and piano ], note: sometimes published with the same opus number as "Deux idylles", op. 44

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

  • FRE French (Français) (Guy Laffaille) , "Une fleur offerte à ma fille", copyright © 2009, (re)printed on this website with kind permission
  • GER German (Deutsch) (Bertram Kottmann) , "Eine Blume, meiner Tochter überreicht", copyright © 2014, (re)printed on this website with kind permission

First published in Poetry, May 1917
Researcher for this page: Barbara Miller

4. She weeps over Rahoon
 (Sung text)

Language: English 
Rain on Rahoon falls softly, softly falling,
Where my dark lover lies.
Sad is his voice that calls me, sadly calling,
At grey moonrise.

Love, hear thou
How soft, how sad his voice is ever calling,
Ever unanswered and the dark rain falling,
Then as now.

Dark too our hearts, O love, shall lie and cold
As his sad heart has lain
Under the moongrey nettles, the black mould
And muttering rain.

Text Authorship:

Set by Herbert Hughes (1882 - 1937), published 1933 [ voice and piano ]

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

  • FRE French (Français) (Guy Laffaille) , "Elle pleure sur Rahoon", copyright © 2009, (re)printed on this website with kind permission
  • GER German (Deutsch) (Bertram Kottmann) , "Sie weint über Rahoon", copyright © 2014, (re)printed on this website with kind permission

First published in Poetry, November 1917
Researcher for this page: Barbara Miller

5. Tutto è sciolto
 (Sung text)

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:

Set by John (Nicholson) Ireland (1879 - 1962), c1931, published 1933 [ voice and piano ]

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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

6. On the beach at Fontana
 (Sung text)

Language: English 
Wind whines and whines the shingle,
The crazy pierstakes groan;
A senile sea numbers each single
Slimesilvered stone.

From whining wind and colder
Grey sea I wrap him warm
And touch his trembling fineboned shoulder
And boyish arm.

Around us fear, descending
Darkness of fear above
And in my heart how deep unending
Ache of love!

Text Authorship:

Set by Roger Sessions (1896 - 1985), 1929, published 1933 [ high voice and piano ]

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

  • CHI Chinese (中文) (Dr Huaixing Wang) , "丰塔纳的海滩上", copyright © 2024, (re)printed on this website with kind permission
  • FRE French (Français) (Guy Laffaille) , "Sur la plage à Fontana", copyright © 2009, (re)printed on this website with kind permission
  • GER German (Deutsch) (Bertram Kottmann) , "Am Strand von Fontana", copyright © 2014, (re)printed on this website with kind permission

First published in Poetry, November 1917.

Researcher for this page: Barbara Miller

7. Simples
 (Sung text)

Language: English 
Of cool sweet dew and radiance mild
The moon a web of silence weaves
In the still garden where a child
Gathers the simple salad leaves.

A moondew stars her hanging hair
And moonlight kisses her young brow
And, gathering she sings an air:
O bella bionda! Sei come l'onda!

Be mine, I pray, a waxen ear
To shield me from her childish croon,
And mine a shielded heart for her
Who gathers simples of the moon.

Text Authorship:

Set by Arthur Edward Drummond Bliss, Sir (1891 - 1975), c1931, published 1933, first performed 1932 [ voice and piano ]

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

  • FRE French (Français) (Guy Laffaille) , "Simples", 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. The text is preceded by the following epigraph: "O bella bionda!/ Sei come l'onda!" Note for stanza 2, line 2: word 3 is "touches" in some editions.

Researcher for this page: Ted Perry

8. Flood
 (Sung text)

Language: English 
Goldbrown upon the sated flood
The rockvine clusters lift and sway.
Vast wings above the lambent waters brood
Of sullen day.

A waste of waters ruthlessly
Sways and uplifts its weedy mane
Where brooding day stares down upon the sea
In dull disdain.

Uplift and sway, O golden vine,
Your clustered fruits to love's full flood,
Lambent and vast and ruthless as is thine
Incertitude!

Text Authorship:

Set by Herbert Norman Howells (1892 - 1983), c1931, published 1933, first performed 1932 [ voice and piano ]

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

  • FRE French (Français) (Guy Laffaille) , "Inondation", 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: Barbara Miller

9. Nightpiece
 (Sung text)

Language: English 
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.

Text Authorship:

Set by George Antheil (1900 - 1959), published 1933 [ voice and piano ]

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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

First published in Poetry, May 1917

Researcher for this text: Emily Ezust [Administrator]

10. Alone
 (Sung text)

Language: English 
The moon's greygolden meshes make
All night a veil,
The shorelamps in the sleeping lake
Laburnum tendrils trail. 

The sly reeds whisper to the night
A name -- her name --
And all my soul is a delight,
A swoon of shame.

Text Authorship:

Set by Edgardo Carducci (1898 - 1967), published 1933 [ voice and piano ]

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

  • FRE French (Français) (Guy Laffaille) , "Seul", 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, 1917
Researcher for this text: Emily Ezust [Administrator]

11. A memory of the players in a mirror at midnight
 (Sung text)

Language: English 
They mouth love's language. Gnash
The thirteen teeth
Your lean jaws grin with. Lash
Your itch and quailing, nude greed of the flesh. 
Love's breath in you is stale, worded or sung,
As sour as cat's breath,
Harsh of tongue. 

This grey that stares
Lies not, stark skin and bone. 
Leave greasy lips their kissing. None
Will choose her what you see to mouth upon. 
Dire hunger holds his hour. 
Pluck forth your heart, saltblood, a fruit of tears. 
Pluck and devour!

Text Authorship:

  • by James Joyce (1882 - 1941), "A memory of the players in a mirror at midnight", written 1917, appears in Pomes Penyeach, no. 11

Set by (Aynsley) Eugene Goossens, Sir (1893 - 1962), op. 49 (1930), published 1933, first performed 1932 [ voice and piano ]

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

  • FRE French (Français) (Guy Laffaille) , "Un souvenir des acteurs dans un miroir à minuit", copyright © 2009, (re)printed on this website with kind permission

First published in Poesia, April 1920

Researcher for this text: Emily Ezust [Administrator]

12. Bahnhofstrasse
 (Sung text)

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:

Set by Charles Wilfred Orr (1893 - 1976), c1931, published 1933, first performed 1932 [ tenor and piano ]

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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]

13. A Prayer
 (Sung text)

Language: English 
Again!
Come, give, yield all your strength to me!
From far a low word breathes on the breaking brain
Its cruel calm, submission's misery,
Gentling her awe as to a soul predestined.
Cease, silent love! My doom!

Blind me with your dark nearness, O have mercy, beloved enemy of my will!
I dare not withstand the cold touch that I dread.
Draw from me still
My slow life! Bend deeper on me, threatening head,
Proud by my downfall, remembering, pitying
Him who is, him who was!

Again!
Together, folded by the night, they lay on earth. I hear
From far her low word breathe on my breaking brain.
Come! I yield. Bend deeper upon me! I am here.
Subduer, do not leave me! Only joy, only anguish,
Take me, save me, soothe me, O spare me!

Text Authorship:

Set by Bernard van Dieren (1887 - 1936), 1930, published 1933 [ voice and piano ]

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

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

Researcher for this page: Barbara Miller
Total word count: 879