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Three Countee Cullen Songs

Song Cycle by Robert Owens (1925 - 2017)

1. From the Dark Tower  [sung text not yet checked]

Language: English 
We shall not always plant while others reap
The golden increment of bursting fruit,
Not always countenance, abject and mute,
That lesser men should hold their brothers cheap;
Not everlastingly while others sleep
Shall we beguile their limbs with mellow flute,
Not always bend to some more subtle brute;
We were not made to eternally weep.
The night whose sable breast relieves the stark,
White stars is no less lovely being dark,
And there are buds that cannot bloom at all
In light, but crumple, piteous, and fall;
So in the dark we hide the heart that bleeds,
And wait, and tend our agonizing seeds.

Text Authorship:

  • by Countee Cullen (1903 - 1946), "From the Dark Tower"

See other settings of this text.

Researcher for this text: Emily Ezust [Administrator]

2. Yet do I marvel  [sung text not yet checked]

Language: English 
I doubt not God is good, well-meaning, kind
And did He stoop to quibble could tell why
The little buried mole continues blind,
Why flesh that mirrors Him must some day die,
Make plain the reason tortured Tantalus
Is baited by the fickle fruit, declare
If merely brute caprice dooms Sisyphus
To struggle up a never-ending stair.
Inscrutable His ways are, and immune
To catechism by a mind too strewn
With petty cares to slightly understand
What awful brain compels His awful hand.
Yet do I marvel at this curious thing:
To make a poet black, and bid him sing!

Text Authorship:

  • by Countee Cullen (1903 - 1946), "Yet do I marvel"

See other settings of this text.

Researcher for this text: Emily Ezust [Administrator]

3. For a poet  [sung text not yet checked]

Language: English 
I have wrapped my dreams in a silken cloth,
And laid them away in a box of gold;
Where long will cling the lips of the moth,
I have wrapped my dreams in a silken cloth;
I hide no hate; I am not even wroth
Who found earth's breath so keen and cold;
I have wrapped my dreams in a silken cloth,
And laid them away in a box of gold.

Text Authorship:

  • by Countee Cullen (1903 - 1946), "For a poet"

See other settings of this text.

Researcher for this text: Emily Ezust [Administrator]
Total word count: 276
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