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by Dante Gabriel Rossetti (1828 - 1882)

Your hands lie open in the long fresh...
NOTE: the footnotes have been removed from this text; return to general view
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 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 

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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]

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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

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