LiederNet logo

CONTENTS

×
  • Home | Introduction
  • Composers (20,103)
  • Text Authors (19,447)
  • 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 Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1807 - 1882)

The Arrow And The Song
 (Sung text for setting by L. Liebermann)
 Matches original text
Language: English 
I shot an Arrow into the air
It fell to earth I knew not where,
For so swiftly it flew, the sight
Could not follow it in its flight.

I breath'd a Song into the air
It fell to earth, I knew not where.
For who has sight so keen and strong
That it can follow the flight of a song?

Long, long afterward in an oak
I found the Arrow still unbroke;
And the Song from begining to end
I found again in the heart of a friend.

Note: parodied in the anonymous poem I stuck a pin into a chair.

Composition:

    Set to music by Lowell Liebermann (b. 1961), "The Arrow And The Song", op. 57 no. 6 (1997) [ high voice and piano ], from Six Songs on Poems by Henry W. Longfellow, no. 6

Text Authorship:

  • by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1807 - 1882), "The Arrow and the Song", appears in The Belfry of Bruges and Other Poems, first published 1846

See other settings of this text.


Researcher for this text: Emily Ezust [Administrator]

This text was added to the website between May 1995 and September 2003.
Line count: 12
Word count: 91

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