Before the first ray of blushing day,
  Who should come by but Kitty [Bhan]1,
With her cheek like the rose on a bed of snows,
  And her bosom beneath like the sailing swan.
  I [looked]2 and [looked]2 till my heart was gone.
 
With the foot of the fawn she crossed the lawn,
  Half confiding and half in fear;
And her eyes of blue they [thrilled]3 me through,
  One blessèd minute; then like the deer,
  Away she [darted]4, and left me here.
 
Oh! Sun, you are late at your golden gate,
  For you've nothing to show beneath the sky
To compare to the lass who crossed the grass
  Of the shamrock field ere the dew was dry,
  And the glance that she gave me as she went by.

View original text (without footnotes)
In some editions of Graves, the title is "Kitty Bawn"
¹ Carmichael (and some other editions of Graves): "Bawn"
² Carmichael: "look'd"
³ Carmichael: "thrill'd"
⁴ Stanford: "started"

Text Authorship:

• by Alfred Perceval Graves (1846 - 1931), "Kitty Bawn", appears in Irish Songs and Ballads, in Songs and Ballads [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 Mary Grant Carmichael (1851 - 1935), "Kitty Bawn", published 1890 [ voice and piano ], from Album of Six Songs by A. P. Graves, no. 6, London: Boosey & Co.; republished in Women Composers Music Through the Ages, ed. by Sylvia Glickman and Martha Furman Schleifer, Volume 7: Composers Born 1800 to 1899, Vocal Music, New Haven, Detroit, etc.: G.K. Hall & Co., 2003, pages 347-350. [sung text checked 1 time]
• by Charles Villiers Stanford, Sir (1852 - 1924), "Kitty Bawn ", published [1882?] [ voice and piano ], from Songs of Old Ireland. A Collection of Fifty Irish Melodies Unknown in England, no. 40, arrangement ; London, Boosey & Co. ; dedicated to Johannes Brahms, August 1882 [sung text checked 1 time]

Researcher for this page: Sharon Krebs [Guest Editor]

This text was added to the website: 2013-04-12
Line count: 15
Word count: 127