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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.

Text Authorship:

  • by Dante Gabriel Rossetti (1828 - 1882), "Silent noon", appears in Ballads and Sonnets, first published 1881

See other settings of this text.

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

  • CAT Catalan (Català) (Sílvia Pujalte Piñán) , "Migdia silenciós", copyright © 2013, (re)printed on this website with kind permission
  • FRE French (Français) (Tim Palmer) , copyright © 2017, (re)printed on this website with kind permission
  • GER German (Deutsch) (Richard Flatter) , "Schweigender Mittag", appears in Die Fähre, Englische Lyrik aus fünf Jahrhunderten, first published 1936
  • GER German (Deutsch) (Sylvia Bendel Larcher) , copyright © 2021, (re)printed on this website with kind permission
  • POL Polish (Polski) (Jan Kasprowicz) , "Cisza południa", Warsaw, Księgarnia H. Antenberga, first published 1907
  • SPA Spanish (Español) (Mercedes Vivas) , copyright © 2011, (re)printed on this website with kind permission

View original text (without footnotes)
1 Vaughan Williams: "skies"

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