The Day of Beauty

Song Cycle by Henry Clough-Leighter (1874 - 1956)

?. Silent noon  [sung text not yet checked]

Language: English 
Your hands lie open in the long fresh grass, -
  The finger-points look through like rosy blooms:
  Your eyes smile peace. The pasture gleams and glooms
'Neath billowing [clouds]1 that scatter and amass.

All round our nest, far as the eye can pass,
  Are golden kingcup fields with silver edge
  Where the cow-parsley skirts the hawthorn hedge.
'Tis visible silence, still as the hour glass.

Deep in the sunsearched growths the dragon-fly
Hangs like a blue thread loosened from the sky: -
  So this winged hour is dropt to us from above.
Oh! clasp we to our hearts, for deathless dower,
This close-companioned inarticulate hour
  When twofold silence was the song of love.

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

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1 Vaughan Williams: "skies"

Researcher for this text: Emily Ezust [Administrator]
Total word count: 112