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Recuerdo

Song Cycle by John Musto (b. 1954)

1. Echo
 (Sung text)

Language: English 
Come to me in the silence of the night;
Come in the speaking silence of a dream;
Come with soft rounded cheeks and eyes as bright
As sunlight on a stream;
Come back in tears,
O memory, hope, love of finished years. 

Oh dream how sweet, too sweet, too bitter sweet,
Whose wakening should have been in Paradise,
Where souls brimfull of love abide and meet;
Where thirsting longing eyes
Watch the slow door
That opening, letting in, lets out no more. 

Yet come to me in dreams, that I may live
My very life again though cold in death:
Come back to me in dreams, that I may give
Pulse for pulse, breath for breath:
Speak low, lean low,
As long ago, my love, how long ago!

Text Authorship:

  • by Christina Georgina Rossetti (1830 - 1894), "Echo", written 1854

See other settings of this text.

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

  • GER German (Deutsch) (Bertram Kottmann) , "Echo", copyright © 2005, (re)printed on this website with kind permission

Note: the text inspired the orchestral work "Symphonic Rhapsody" by Ralph Vaughan Williams, 1904
Researcher for this text: Emily Ezust [Administrator]

2. Recuerdo
 (Sung text)

Language: English 
We were very tired, we were very merry —
We had gone back and forth all night on the ferry.
It was bare and bright, and smelled like a stable —
But we looked into a fire, we leaned across a table,
We lay on a hill-top underneath the moon;
And the whistles kept blowing, and the dawn came soon.
We were very tired, we were very merry —
We had gone back and forth all night on the ferry.
And you ate an apple, and I ate a pear,
From a dozen of each we had bought somewhere;
And the sky went wan, and the wind came cold,
And the sun rose dripping, a bucketful of gold.
We were very tired, we were very merry,
We had gone back and forth all night on the ferry.
We hailed, "Good morrow, mother!" to a shawl-covered head,
And bought a morning paper, which neither of us read;
And she wept, "God bless you!" for the apples and pears,
And we gave her all our money but our subway fares.

Text Authorship:

  • by Edna St. Vincent Millay (1892 - 1950), "Recuerdo", appears in A Few Figs from Thistles, first published 1920

See other settings of this text.

Researcher for this page: John Musto

3. Last Song
 (Sung text)

Language: English 
Goodbye, goodbye! 
There was so much to love, I could not love it all;
I could not love it enough. 
Some things I overlooked, and some I could not find. 
Let the crystal clasp them
When you drink your wine, in autumn.

Text Authorship:

  • by Louise Bogan (1897 - 1970), appears in After the Persian, first published 1937

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Researcher for this page: John Musto
Total word count: 350
Gentle Reminder

This website began in 1995 as a personal project by Emily Ezust, who has been working on it full-time without a salary since 2008. Our research has never had any government or institutional funding, so if you found the information here useful, please consider making a donation. Your help is greatly appreciated!
–Emily Ezust, Founder

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