LiederNet logo

CONTENTS

×
  • Home | Introduction
  • Composers (20,111)
  • Text Authors (19,486)
  • 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 Dante Gabriel Rossetti (1828 - 1882)
Translation © by Sylvia Bendel Larcher

Your hands lie open in the long fresh...
Language: English 
Our translations:  CAT FRE GER SPA
Your hands lie open in the long fresh grass, -
  The finger-points look through like rosy blooms:
  Your eyes smile peace. The pasture gleams and glooms
'Neath billowing [clouds]1 that scatter and amass.

All round our nest, far as the eye can pass,
  Are golden kingcup fields with silver edge
  Where the cow-parsley skirts the hawthorn hedge.
'Tis visible silence, still as the hour glass.

Deep in the sunsearched growths the dragon-fly
Hangs like a blue thread loosened from the sky: -
  So this winged hour is dropt to us from above.
Oh! clasp we to our hearts, for deathless dower,
This close-companioned inarticulate hour
  When twofold silence was the song of love.

Available sung texts: (what is this?)

•   R. Vaughan Williams 

About the headline (FAQ)

View original text (without footnotes)
1 Vaughan Williams: "skies"

Text Authorship:

  • by Dante Gabriel Rossetti (1828 - 1882), "Silent noon", appears in Ballads and Sonnets, first published 1881 [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 George Frederick Boyle (1886 - 1948), "Your hands lie open", published 1939 [ voice and piano ] [sung text not yet checked]
  • by Henry Clough-Leighter (1874 - 1956), "Silent noon", published 1910 [ high voice, piano, and string quartet ], from The Day of Beauty [sung text not yet checked]
  • by Edward Toner Cone (b. 1917), "Silent noon", published 1964 [ soprano and piano ], in the collection New Vistas of Song [sung text not yet checked]
  • by Frederick Shepherd Converse (1871 - 1940), "Silent noon", published <<1940 [ voice and piano ] [sung text not yet checked]
  • by John Henry Diercks (b. 1927), "Pastorale", 1957 [ SSA chorus and piano ] [sung text not yet checked]
  • by Ernest Bristow Farrar (1885 - 1918), "Silent noon", op. 10 no. 2, published 1911 [ voice and piano ], from Vagabond Songs, no. 2 [sung text not yet checked]
  • by Miriam Gideon (1906 - 1996), "Silent noon", 1983 [ medium voice and piano (or flute, oboe, vibraphone, violin, and violoncello) ], from Wing'd Hour, no. 2, New York, Peters [sung text not yet checked]
  • by Robert William Manton (1894 - 1967), "The wing'd hour", 1954 [ medium voice and piano ] [sung text not yet checked]
  • by Charles Wilfred Orr (1893 - 1976), "Silent noon", 1921, published 1922 [ baritone and piano ] [sung text not yet checked]
  • by Masters van Someren-Godfery (d. 1947), "Silent noon", published 1925 [ voice and piano ] [sung text not yet checked]
  • by Ralph Vaughan Williams (1872 - 1958), "Silent noon", 1903, published 1904 [ voice and piano ], from The House of Life, no. 2 [sung text checked 1 time]
  • by Elinor Remick Warren (1900 - 1991), "Silent noon", published 1928 [ voice and piano ] [sung text not yet checked]

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

  • CAT Catalan (Català) (Sílvia Pujalte Piñán) , "Migdia silenciós", copyright © 2013, (re)printed on this website with kind permission
  • FRE French (Français) (Tim Palmer) , copyright © 2017, (re)printed on this website with kind permission
  • GER German (Deutsch) (Richard Flatter) , "Schweigender Mittag", appears in Die Fähre, Englische Lyrik aus fünf Jahrhunderten, first published 1936
  • GER German (Deutsch) (Sylvia Bendel Larcher) , copyright © 2021, (re)printed on this website with kind permission
  • POL Polish (Polski) (Jan Kasprowicz) , "Cisza południa", Warsaw, Księgarnia H. Antenberga, first published 1907
  • SPA Spanish (Español) (Mercedes Vivas) , copyright © 2011, (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: 14
Word count: 112

Deine Hände ruhen offen im langen,...
Language: German (Deutsch)  after the English 
Deine Hände ruhen offen im langen, frischen Gras,
Die Fingerspitzen schauen hindurch wir rosa Blüten:
Deine Augen lächeln Frieden. Die Weide erglänzt und erlischt
Unter den wallenden Wolken, die hin und her wogen.

Rund um unser Nest, so weit das Auge reicht,
Erstrecken sich goldene Dotterblumenfelder mit silbernem Rand,
Wo der Wiesenkerbel die Weissdornhecke säumt.
Diese sichtbare Ruhe, still wie das Stundenglas.

Tief im sonnendurchfluteten Gebüsch hängt
Die Libelle wie ein vom Himmel gelöster blauer Faden:
So fällt uns diese beflügelnde Stunde in den Schoss.
Oh! Drücken wir an unsere Herzen, wie ein unverdientes Erbe,
Diese in tiefer Verbundenheit verbrachte, unaussprechliche Stunde
Als die zweifache Stille ein Lied der Liebe war.

About the headline (FAQ)

Translation of title "Silent noon" = "Mittagsruhe"

Text Authorship:

  • Translation from English to German (Deutsch) copyright © 2021 by Sylvia Bendel Larcher, (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 Dante Gabriel Rossetti (1828 - 1882), "Silent noon", appears in Ballads and Sonnets, first published 1881
    • Go to the text page.

 

This text was added to the website: 2021-05-13
Line count: 14
Word count: 111

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