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Six Song Pictures

Song Cycle by Florence Newell Barbour (1867 - 1946)

1. Before dawn  [sung text not yet checked]

Language: English 
A keen, insistent hint of dawn
Fell from the mountain height;
A wan, uncertain gleam betrayed
The faltering of the night.

The emphasis of silence made
The fog above the brook
Intensely pale; the trees took on
A haunted, haggard look.

Such quiet came, expectancy
Filled all the earth and sky:
Time seemed to pause a little space;
I heard a dream go by!

Text Authorship:

  • by (James) Maurice Thompson (1844 - 1901), "Before dawn"

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Researcher for this text: Emily Ezust [Administrator]

2. The coral grove  [sung text not yet checked]

Language: English 
Deep in the wave is a coral grove,
Where the purple mullet, and gold-fish rove,
Where the sea-flower spreads its leaves of blue,
That never are wet with falling dew,
But in bright and changeful beauty shine,
Far down in the green and glassy brine.
The floor is of sand, like the mountain drift,
And the pearl shells spangle the flinty snow;
From coral rocks the sea plants lift
Their boughs, where the tides and billows flow;
The water is calm and still below,
For the winds and waves are absent there,
And the sands are bright as the stars that glow
In the motionless fields of upper air:
There with its waving blade of green,
The sea-flag streams through the silent water,
And the crimson leaf of the dulse is seen
To blush, like a banner bathed in slaughter:
There with a light and easy motion,
The fan-coral sweeps through the clear deep sea;
And the yellow and scarlet tufts of ocean.
Are bending like corn on file upland lea:
And life, in rare and beautiful forms,
Is sporting amid those bowers of stone,
And is safe, when the wrathful spirit of storms,
Has made the top of the wave his own:
And when the ship from his fury flies,
Where the myriad voices of ocean roar,
When the wind-god frowns in the murky skies,
And demons are waiting the wreck on shore;
Then far below in the peaceful sea,
The purple mullet, and gold-fish rove,
Where the waters murmur tranquilly,
Through the bending twigs of the coral grove.

Text Authorship:

  • by James Gates Percival (1795 - 1856), "The coral grove"

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Researcher for this text: Emily Ezust [Administrator]

3. Tell me thou wanderers  [sung text not yet checked]

Language: English 
Tell me, [thou Star]1, whose wings of light
Speed thee in thy fiery flight,
In what cavern of the night 
   Will thy pinions close now?

Tell me, Moon, thou pale and grey
Pilgrim, of Heav'ns homeless way,
In what depth of night or day,
   Seekest thou repose now?

Weary wind, who wanderest
Like the world's rejected guest
Hast thou still some secret nest
   On the tree or billow?

Text Authorship:

  • by Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792 - 1822), "The world's wanderers", first published 1824

See other settings of this text.

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

  • CHI Chinese (中文) [singable] (Dr Huaixing Wang) , copyright © 2024, (re)printed on this website with kind permission
  • CZE Czech (Čeština) (Jaroslav Vrchlický) , "Poutníci světa"

View original text (without footnotes)
1 Ives: "Star"

Researcher for this text: Emily Ezust [Administrator]

4. O wild West Wind  [sung text not yet checked]

Language: English 
                      I
O wild West Wind, [ thou breath of Autumn's being,
Thou, from whose unseen presence the leaves dead
Are driven, like ghosts from an enchanter fleeing,

Yellow, and black, and pale, and hectic red,
Pestilence-stricken multitudes: O thou,
Who chariotest to their dark wintry bed

The winged seeds, where they lie cold and low,
Each like a corpse within its grave, until
Thine azure sister of the Spring shall blow

Her clarion o'er the dreaming earth, and fill
(Driving sweet buds like flocks to feed in air)
With living hues and odours plain and hill:

Wild Spirit, which art moving everywhere;
Destroyer and preserver; hear, oh, hear!

                     II

Thou on whose stream, mid the steep sky's commotion,
Loose clouds like earth's decaying leaves are shed,
Shook from the tangled boughs of Heaven and Ocean,

Angels of rain and lightning: there are spread
On the blue surface of thine aery surge,
Like the bright hair uplifted from the head

Of some fierce Maenad, even from the dim verge
Of the horizon to the zenith's height,
The locks of the approaching storm. Thou dirge

Of the dying year, to which this closing night
Will be the dome of a vast sepulchre,
Vaulted with all thy congregated might

Of vapours, from whose solid atmosphere
Black rain, and fire, and hail will burst: oh, hear!

                    III

Thou who didst waken from his summer dreams
The blue Mediterranean, where he lay,
Lulled by the coil of his crystalline streams,

Beside a pumice isle in Baiae's bay,
And saw in sleep old palaces and towers
Quivering within the wave's intenser day,

All overgrown with azure moss and flowers 
So sweet, the sense faints picturing them! Thou
For whose path the Atlantic's level powers

Cleave themselves into chasms, while far below
The sea-blooms and the oozy woods which wear
The sapless foliage of the ocean, know

Thy voice, and suddenly grow gray with fear,
And tremble and despoil themselves: oh, hear!

                     IV

If I were a dead leaf thou mightest bear;
If I were a swift cloud to fly with thee;
A wave to pant beneath thy power, and share

The impulse of thy strength, only less free
Than thou, O uncontrollable! If even
I were as in my boyhood, and could be

The comrade of thy wanderings over Heaven,
As then, when to outstrip thy skiey speed
Scarce seemed a vision; I would ne'er have striven

As thus with thee in prayer in my sore need.
Oh, lift me as a wave, a leaf, a cloud!
I fall upon the thorns of life! I bleed!

A heavy weight of hours has chained and bowed
One too like thee: tameless, and swift, and proud.]1

                      V

Make me thy lyre, even as the forest is:
What if my leaves are falling like its own!
The tumult of thy mighty harmonies

Will take from both a deep, autumnal tone,
Sweet though in sadness. Be thou, Spirit fierce,
My spirit! Be thou me, impetuous one!

Drive my dead thoughts over the universe
Like withered leaves to quicken a new birth!
And, by the incantation of this verse,

Scatter, as from an unextinguished hearth
Ashes and sparks, my words among mankind!
Be through my lips to unawakened earth

The trumpet of a prophecy! O, Wind,
If Winter comes, can Spring be far behind?

Text Authorship:

  • by Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792 - 1822), "Ode to the West Wind"

See other settings of this text.

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

  • HUN Hungarian (Magyar) (Árpád Tóth) , "Óda a nyugati Szélhez"

View original text (without footnotes)
1 omitted by Elgar

Researcher for this text: Emily Ezust [Administrator]

5. Every wave caught a star

Language: English 
— This text is not currently
in the database but will be added
as soon as we obtain it. —

Text Authorship:

  • by A. B. Welby

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6. The storm

Language: English 
— This text is not currently
in the database but will be added
as soon as we obtain it. —

Text Authorship:

  • by George Gordon Noel Byron, Lord Byron (1788 - 1824)

Go to the general single-text view

Total word count: 950
Gentle Reminder

This website began in 1995 as a personal project by Emily Ezust, who has been working on it full-time without a salary since 2008. Our research has never had any government or institutional funding, so if you found the information here useful, please consider making a donation. Your help is greatly appreciated!
–Emily Ezust, Founder

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