by Mary Annette 'Elizabeth' von Arnim (1866 - 1941)
From 'The Enchanted April'
Language: English
She stared. Such beauty and she there to see it. Such beauty and she alive to feel it. Her face was bathed in light. How beautiful, how beautiful. Not to have died before this. To have been allowed to see, breathe, feel this. She stared, her lips parted. Happy? Poor, ordinary, everyday word. But what could she say, how could she describe it? It was as though she could hard-y stay inside herself, it was as though she were too small to hold so much of joy, it was as though she were washed through with light.
Note: this is a prose text. The line-breaks are arbitrary.
Authorship:
- by Mary Annette 'Elizabeth' von Arnim (1866 - 1941), appears in The Enchanted April, first published 1922 [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 Rick Sowash (b. 1950), "From 'The Enchanted April'", 1998. [mezzo-soprano and piano] [ sung text verified 1 time]
Researcher for this page: Paul Ezust [Guest Editor]
This text was added to the website: 2017-10-20
Line count: 16
Word count: 97