by William Butler Yeats (1865 - 1939)
Crazy Jane and Jack the Journeyman Matches original text
Language: English
I know, although when looks meet I tremble to the bone, The more I leave the door unlatched The sooner love is gone, For love is but a skein unwound Between the dark and dawn. A lonely ghost the ghost is That to God shall come; I - love's skein upon the ground, My body in the tomb - Shall leap into the light lost In my mother's womb. But were I left to lie alone In an empty bed, The skein so bound us ghost to ghost When he turned his head passing on the road that night, Mine must walk when dead.
Composition:
- Set to music by Stanley Grill (b. 1953), "Crazy Jane and Jack the Journeyman", 1999, copyright © 2000 [ soprano, flute, violin, viola, cello and piano ], from Crazy Jane Sings, no. 4, confirmed with an online score
Text Authorship:
- by William Butler Yeats (1865 - 1939), "Crazy Jane and Jack the Journeyman", appears in Words for Music Perhaps and Other Poems, first published 1932
See other settings of this text.
Researcher for this text: Emily Ezust [Administrator]
This text was added to the website: 2009-01-03
Line count: 18
Word count: 103