LiederNet logo

CONTENTS

×
  • Home | Introduction
  • Composers (20,103)
  • Text Authors (19,450)
  • Go to a Random Text
  • What’s New
  • A Small Tour
  • FAQ & Links
  • Donors
  • DONATE

UTILITIES

  • Search Everything
  • Search by Surname
  • Search by Title or First Line
  • Search by Year
  • Search by Collection

CREDITS

  • Emily Ezust
  • Contributors (1,114)
  • Contact Information
  • Bibliography

  • Copyright Statement
  • Privacy Policy

Follow us on Facebook

by Alfred Tennyson, Lord (1809 - 1892)

The fault was mine
 (Sung text for setting by A. Somervell)
 See original
Language: English 
1.
'The fault was mine, the fault was mine' -- 
Why am I sitting here so stunn'd and still,
Plucking the harmless wild-flower on the hill? -- 
It is this guilty hand! -- 
And there arises ever a passionate cry
 ... 
A cry for a brother's blood:
It will ring in my heart and my ears, till I die, till I die.

2.
Is it gone? my pulses beat -- 
What was it? a lying trick of the brain?
Yet I thought I saw her stand,
A shadow there at my feet,
High over the shadowy land.
It is gone; and the heavens fall in a gentle rain,
When they should burst and drown with deluging storms
The feeble vassals of wine and anger and lust,
The little hearts that know not how to forgive:
Arise, my God, and strike, for we hold Thee just,
Strike dead the whole weak race of venomous worms,
That sting each other here in the dust;
We are not worthy to live.

Composition:

    Set to music by Arthur Somervell, Sir (1863 - 1937), "The fault was mine", published 1898 [ voice and piano ], from Cycle of Songs from Tennyson's Maud, no. 10, London: Boosey & Hawkes

Text Authorship:

  • by Alfred Tennyson, Lord (1809 - 1892), no title, appears in Maud, Part 2, no. 1

Go to the general single-text view


Researcher for this text: Emily Ezust [Administrator]

This text was added to the website between May 1995 and September 2003.
Line count: 50
Word count: 378

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

Donate

We use cookies for internal analytics and to earn much-needed advertising revenue. (Did you know you can help support us by turning off ad-blockers?) To learn more, see our Privacy Policy. To learn how to opt out of cookies, please visit this site.

I acknowledge the use of cookies

Contact
Copyright
Privacy

Copyright © 2025 The LiederNet Archive

Site redesign by Shawn Thuris