Silent noon | Your hands lie open in the long fresh grass

Your hands lie open in the long fresh...

Language: English

Our translations: CAT FRE GER SPA

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.

Available sung texts: ← What is this?

• R. Vaughan Williams

About the headline (FAQ)

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

Text Authorship:

by Dante Gabriel Rossetti (1828 - 1882), "Silent noon", appears in Ballads and Sonnets, first published 1881 [author's text checked 1 time against a primary source]

Musical settings (art songs, Lieder, mélodies, (etc.), choral pieces, and other vocal works set to this text), listed by composer (not necessarily exhaustive):

by George Frederick Boyle (1886 - 1948), "Your hands lie open", published 1939 [ voice and piano ] [sung text not yet checked]
by Henry Clough-Leighter (1874 - 1956), "Silent noon", published 1910 [ high voice, piano, and string quartet ], from The Day of Beauty [sung text not yet checked]
by Edward Toner Cone (b. 1917), "Silent noon", published 1964 [ soprano and piano ], in the collection New Vistas of Song [sung text not yet checked]
by Frederick Shepherd Converse (1871 - 1940), "Silent noon", published <<1940 [ voice and piano ] [sung text not yet checked]
by John Henry Diercks (b. 1927), "Pastorale", 1957 [ SSA chorus and piano ] [sung text not yet checked]
by Ernest Bristow Farrar (1885 - 1918), "Silent noon", op. 10 no. 2, published 1911 [ voice and piano ], from Vagabond Songs, no. 2 [sung text not yet checked]
by Miriam Gideon (1906 - 1996), "Silent noon", 1983 [ medium voice and piano (or flute, oboe, vibraphone, violin, and violoncello) ], from Wing'd Hour, no. 2, New York, Peters [sung text not yet checked]
by Robert William Manton (1894 - 1967), "The wing'd hour", 1954 [ medium voice and piano ] [sung text not yet checked]
by Charles Wilfred Orr (1893 - 1976), "Silent noon", 1921, published 1922 [ baritone and piano ] [sung text not yet checked]
by Masters van Someren-Godfery (d. 1947), "Silent noon", published 1925 [ voice and piano ] [sung text not yet checked]
by Ralph Vaughan Williams (1872 - 1958), "Silent noon", 1903, published 1904 [ voice and piano ], from The House of Life, no. 2 [sung text checked 1 time]
by Elinor Remick Warren (1900 - 1991), "Silent noon", published 1928 [ voice and piano ] [sung text not yet checked]

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

GER German (Deutsch) (Richard Flatter) , "Schweigender Mittag", appears in Die Fähre, Englische Lyrik aus fünf Jahrhunderten, first published 1936
POL Polish (Polski) (Jan Kasprowicz) , "Cisza południa", Warsaw, Księgarnia H. Antenberga, first published 1907

Researcher for this text: Emily Ezust [Administrator]

This text was added to the website between May 1995 and September 2003.
Line count: 14
Word count: 112