Three Early Songs

Song Cycle by George Crumb (1929 - 2022)

1. Night
 (Sung text)

Language: English 
How beautiful is night!
A dewy freshness fills the silent air;
No mist obscures, nor cloud, nor speck, nor stain
Breaks the serene of heaven:
In full-orbed glory yonder Moon divine
Rolls through the dark-blue depths.
Beneath her steady ray
The desert-circle spreads,
Like the round ocean, girdled with the sky.
How beautiful is night!

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

  • FRE French (Français) (Guy Laffaille) , copyright © 2022, (re)printed on this website with kind permission
  • SPA Spanish (Español) (Elisa Rapado) , copyright © 2020, (re)printed on this website with kind permission

Researcher for this text: Emily Ezust [Administrator]

2. Let it be forgotten
 (Sung text)

Language: English 
Let it be forgotten as a flower is forgotten,
Forgotten as a fire that once was singing gold.
Let it be forgotten forever and ever.
Time is a kind friend, he will make us old.

If anyone asks, say it was forgotten,
Long and long ago.
As a flower, as a fire, as a hushed foot-fall
In a long forgotten snow.

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

  • FRE French (Français) (Guy Laffaille) , "Qu'il soit oublié", copyright © 2022, (re)printed on this website with kind permission

Researcher for this text: Emily Ezust [Administrator]

3. Wind Elegy (W.E.W.)
 (Sung text)

Language: English 
Only the wind knows he is gone,
Only the wind grieves,
The sun shines, the fields are sown,
Sparrows mate in the eaves;

But I heard the wind in the pines he planted
And the hemlocks overhead,
"His acres wake, for the year turns,
But he is asleep," it said.

Text Authorship:

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

  • FRE French (Français) (Guy Laffaille) , "Élégie au vent", copyright © 2017, (re)printed on this website with kind permission
  • GER German (Deutsch) (Bertram Kottmann) , "Des Windes Klage (W.E.W.)", copyright © 2020, (re)printed on this website with kind permission

Note: According to Carol Schoen, in Sara Teasdale, Twayne Publishers, 1986, page 150, the "W.E.W." in the title refers to W. E. Wheeler, in memory of whom the poem is written.

Researcher for this text: Emily Ezust [Administrator]
Total word count: 169