LiederNet logo

CONTENTS

×
  • Home | Introduction
  • Composers (20,102)
  • Text Authors (19,440)
  • 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 (1,113)
  • 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 Emily Dickinson (1830 - 1886)
Translation © by Bertram Kottmann

As imperceptibly as grief
Language: English 
Our translations:  FRE GER ITA
As imperceptibly as grief
The Summer lapsed away --
Too imperceptible, at last,
To seem like Perfidy -- 

A Quietness distilled
As Twilight long begun,
Or Nature spending with herself
Sequestered Afternoon --

The Dusk drew earlier in --
The morning foreign shone --
A courteous, yet harrowing Grace,
As Guest, [that]1 would be gone --

And thus, without a Wing
Or service of a Keel
Our Summer made her light escape
Into the Beautiful.

Available sung texts: (what is this?)

•   E. Bacon 

About the headline (FAQ)

View original text (without footnotes)
1 Bacon: "who"

Text Authorship:

  • by Emily Dickinson (1830 - 1886), no title, appears in Poems by Emily Dickinson, first published 1891 [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 Ernst Bacon (1898 - 1990), "Summer's lapse", alternate title: "As imperceptibly as grief", c1960-74 [ soprano, piano ] [sung text checked 1 time]
  • by Martin Butler (b. 1960), "The summer lapsed away", published 1985 [ soprano, clarinet, and piano ], from Three Emily Dickinson Songs, no. 1, Oxford, Oxford University Press [sung text not yet checked]
  • by Richard Layton Kent (b. 1916), "As imperceptibly as grief", published 1966 [ SSA chorus and piano ], from Autumn songs, no. 2, New York: Lawson-Gould [sung text not yet checked]
  • by André Previn (1929 - 2019), "As imperceptibly as grief", 1999, first performed 1999 [ soprano and piano ], from Three Dickinson Songs, no. 1 [sung text checked 1 time]
  • by Wim de Ruiter (b. 1943), "As imperceptibly as grief", 1983 [sung text not yet checked]
  • by Robert W. Thygerson , "As imperceptibly as grief", published 1980 [ SSA chorus and piano ] [sung text not yet checked]

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

  • FRE French (Français) (Guy Laffaille) , copyright © 2009, (re)printed on this website with kind permission
  • GER German (Deutsch) (Bertram Kottmann) , copyright © 2017, (re)printed on this website with kind permission
  • ITA Italian (Italiano) (Ferdinando Albeggiani) , copyright © 2010, (re)printed on this website with kind permission


Researcher for this text: Emily Ezust [Administrator]

This text was added to the website between May 1995 and September 2003.
Line count: 16
Word count: 70

So wenig wahrnehmbar wie Leid
Language: German (Deutsch)  after the English 
So wenig wahrnehmbar wie Leid
verging des Sommers Blühn -
zu wenig wahrnehmbar zuletzt
als dass er treulos schien -

Ruh’ träufelte herab,
längst Zwielicht überm Land -
Natur den ganzen Nachmittag 
in Stille zu sich fand -

Die Dämmerung fiel früher ein -
fremder das Morgenrot -
anmutig, höflich, - schmerzlich doch -
ein Gast, der alsbald fort -

und solcherart, ganz flügellos
und ohne einen Kiel
entfloh der Sommer, mühelos,
ins schönere Exil.

About the headline (FAQ)

Text Authorship:

  • Translation from English to German (Deutsch) copyright © 2017 by Bertram Kottmann, (re)printed on this website with kind permission. To reprint and distribute this author's work for concert programs, CD booklets, etc., you must ask the copyright-holder(s) directly for permission. If you receive no response, you must consider it a refusal.

    Bertram Kottmann.  Contact: BKottmann (AT) t-online.de

    If you wish to commission a new translation, please contact: licenses@email.lieder.example.net

Based on:

  • a text in English by Emily Dickinson (1830 - 1886), no title, appears in Poems by Emily Dickinson, first published 1891
    • Go to the text page.

 

This text was added to the website: 2017-05-21
Line count: 16
Word count: 66

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