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Love is not all...

Song Cycle by Alva Henderson (b. 1940)

1. Love is not all...
 (Sung text)

Language: English 
Love is not all: it is not meat nor drink 
Nor slumber nor a roof against the rain;
Nor yet a floating spar to men that sink
And rise and sink and rise and sink again;
Love cannot fill the thickened lung with breath,
Nor clean the blood, nor set the fractured bone;
Yet many a man is making friends with death
Even as I speak, for lack of love alone.
It well may be that in a difficult hour,
Pinned down by pain and moaning for release, 
Or nagged by want past resolution's power,
I might be driven to sell your love for peace,
Or trade the memory of this night for food.
It well may be. I do not think I would.

Text Authorship:

  • by Edna St. Vincent Millay (1892 - 1950), "Sonnet XXX", appears in Fatal Interview, first published 1931

See other settings of this text.

Researcher for this text: Emily Ezust [Administrator]

2. What lips my lips have kissed...
 (Sung text)

Language: English 
What lips my lips have kissed, and where, and why,
I have forgotten, and what arms have lain
Under my head till morning; but the rain
Is full of ghosts tonight, that tap and sigh
Upon the glass and listen for reply,
And in my heart there stirs a quiet pain
For unremembered lads that not again
Will turn to me at midnight with a cry.
Thus in winter stands the lonely tree,
Nor knows what birds have vanished one by one,
Yet knows its boughs more silent than before:
I cannot say what loves have come and gone,
I only know that summer sang in me
A little while, that in me sings no more.

Text Authorship:

  • by Edna St. Vincent Millay (1892 - 1950), "Sonnet XLIII", appears in The Harp-Weaver and other poems, in Sonnets from an Ungrafted Tree, first published 1923

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

  • FRI Frisian [singable] (Geart van der Meer) , copyright © 2015, (re)printed on this website with kind permission
  • GER German (Deutsch) [singable] (Walter A. Aue) , "Welch' Lippen meine küßten ( 43. Sonett )", copyright © 2010, (re)printed on this website with kind permission

First published in Vanity Fair, November 1920
Researcher for this page: Robert Manno

3. And you as well must die...
 (Sung text)

Language: English 
And you as well must die, beloved dust,
And all your beauty stand you in no stead;
This flawless, vital hand, this perfect head,
This body of flame and steel, before the gust
Of Death, or under his autumnal frost,
Shall be as any leaf, be no less dead
Than the first leaf that fell,--this wonder fled.
Altered, estranged, disintegrated, lost.
Nor shall my love avail you in your hour.
In spite of all my love, you will arise
Upon that day and wander down the air
Obscurely as the unattended flower,
It mattering not how beautiful you were,
Or how beloved above all else that dies.

Text Authorship:

  • by Edna St. Vincent Millay (1892 - 1950), no title, appears in Second April, first published 1921

See other settings of this text.

Researcher for this text: Emily Ezust [Administrator]

4. When we are old...
 (Sung text)

Language: English 
When we are old and these rejoicing veins
Are frosty channels to a muted stream,
And out of all our burning their remains
No feeblest spark to fire us, even in dream,
This be our solace: that it was not said
When we were young and warm and in our prime,
Upon our couch we lay as lie the dead,
Sleeping away the unreturning time.
O sweet, O heavy-lidded, O my love,
When morning strikes her spear upon the land,
And we must rise and arm us and reprove
The insolent daylight with a steady hand,
Be not discountenanced if the knowing know
We rose from rapture but an hour ago. 

Text Authorship:

  • by Edna St. Vincent Millay (1892 - 1950), "Sonnet XXVIII", appears in Fatal Interview, first published 1931

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Researcher for this text: Emily Ezust [Administrator]
Total word count: 458
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