LiederNet logo

CONTENTS

×
  • Home | Introduction
  • Composers (20,103)
  • Text Authors (19,448)
  • 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

×

Attention! Some of this material is not in the public domain.

It is illegal to copy and distribute our copyright-protected material without permission. It is also illegal to reprint copyright texts or translations without the name of the author or translator.

To inquire about permissions and rates, contact Emily Ezust at licenses@email.lieder.example.net

If you wish to reprint translations, please make sure you include the names of the translators in your email. They are below each translation.

Note: You must use the copyright symbol © when you reprint copyright-protected material.

by William Smyth (1765 - 1849)
Translation © by Guy Laffaille

The farewell song
Language: English 
Our translations:  FRE
O Erin! To thy harp divine
I bid adieu:
Yet let me now its sounds resign
With homage due.
Thy gen'rous sons, that know not fear,
Their feelings, genius, fire:
O blest be all! But Erin dear,
Be blest thy lyre.

O where the heart that would not bound
With answering beat,
To hear thy Planxty's dancing sound,
And numbers sweet.
And where the heart that sinks not low,
And musing melts away,
To hear thy harp's deep lonely flow,
When mourns the lay.

No toil can e'er such sweets supply
No chymic power,
As brings me bee, with honied thigh,
From wild heath flower:
And Science, that could wake the strings
To chords of rapture high.
May envy, while she smiling sings
Thy minstrelsy.

Text Authorship:

  • by William Smyth (1765 - 1849) [author's text not yet checked 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 Ludwig van Beethoven (1770 - 1827), "The farewell song", WoO. 154 (12 Irische Lieder) no. 3, G. 225 no. 3, published 1812/3 [ voice, piano, violin, violoncello ] [sung text checked 1 time]

Available translations, adaptations or excerpts, and transliterations (if applicable):

  • FRE French (Français) (Guy Laffaille) , "Le chant d'adieu", copyright © 2014, (re)printed on this website with kind permission
  • GER German (Deutsch) [singable] (Georg Pertz) , "Abschiedsgesang"


Research team for this page: Guy Laffaille [Guest Editor] , Ferdinando Albeggiani

This text was added to the website: 2005-09-18
Line count: 24
Word count: 125

Le chant d'adieu
Language: French (Français)  after the English 
Ô Érin ! À ta harpe divine,
Je dis adieu :
Mais que maintenant je quitte ses sons
Avec l'hommage dû.
Tes fils généreux qui ne connaissent pas la peur,
Leurs sentiments, leur génie, leur flamme,
Oh, qu'ils soient tous bénis ! mais chère Érin,
Que ta lyre soit bénie.

Où est le cœur qui ne bondirait pas
Avec un battement à l'unisson,
À entendre les notes dansantes de Planxty
Et ses doux rythmes,
Et où est le cœur qui ne se sent pas faible,
Et en rêvant ne s'envole pas,
À entendre le flot profond et solitaire de ta harpe,
Quand le chant pleure.

Aucun travail ne peut fournir de douceurs égales,
Aucune puissance chimique,
À celle que porte l'abeille les pattes pleines de miel
Des fleurs de la lande sauvage :
Et la science qui pourrait éveiller les cordes
Pour produire des accords de ravissement profond,
Peut envier quand elle chante en souriant
Ton art de ménestrel.

Text Authorship:

  • Translation from English to French (Français) copyright © 2014 by Guy Laffaille, (re)printed on this website with kind permission. To reprint and distribute this author's work for concert programs, CD booklets, etc., you may ask the copyright-holder(s) directly or ask us; we are authorized to grant permission on their behalf. Please provide the translator's name when contacting us.
    Contact: licenses@email.lieder.example.net

Based on:

  • a text in English by William Smyth (1765 - 1849)
    • Go to the text page.

 

This text was added to the website: 2014-01-14
Line count: 24
Word count: 155

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