Before Dew and Day | Last night's frost

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by Albert Sergel (1876 - 1946)

Translation © by Alexander K. Puhrer

Vor Tau und Tag

Language: German (Deutsch)

Our translations: ENG

Der Frost in letzter Nacht
hat alle Blüten umgebracht
    vor Tau und Tag . . .

Das war ein helles Glühn
und war ein blumenstilles Blühn
in einem Mädchenherzen.

Er sprach ein Wort in Scherzen,
das klang so kalt, ihr Herz erfror . . 
und keiner weiss, was sie verlor
     vor Tau und Tag . . .

Confirmed with Sehnen und Suchen, Vierte Auflage, Rostock: C.J.E. Volckmann (Volckman & Wetter), 1905, page 148.

Text Authorship:

by Albert Sergel (1876 - 1946), "Vor Tau und Tag", appears in Sehnen und Suchen: Gedichte, in Einkehr und Wende, in Neue Ziele [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 Yrjö Henrik Kilpinen (1892 - 1959), "Vor Tau und Tag", op. 77 no. 6 (1932-3), from Spielmannslieder, no. 6 [sung text checked 1 time]

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

ENG English (Alexander K. Puhrer) , "Before Dew and Day", copyright ©, (re)printed on this website with kind permission

Research team for this page: Emily Ezust [Administrator] , Sharon Krebs [Guest Editor]

This text was added to the website between May 1995 and September 2003.
Line count: 10
Word count: 57

Before Dew and Day

Language: English after the German (Deutsch)

Last night's frost
killed all the blossoms
before dew and dawn...
It was a bright glowing,
a blooming as silent as a flower's,
inside a maiden's heart.
He spoke a word in jest,
it sounded so cold, her heart froze...
And no one knows what she lost
before dew and day.

Text Authorship:

Translation from German (Deutsch) to English copyright © by Alexander K. Puhrer, (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.
Alexander K. Puhrer. We have no current contact information for the copyright-holder.
If you wish to commission a new translation, please contact: licenses@email.lieder.example.net

Based on:

a text in German (Deutsch) by Albert Sergel (1876 - 1946), "Vor Tau und Tag", appears in Sehnen und Suchen: Gedichte, in Einkehr und Wende, in Neue Ziele
- Go to the text page.

This text was added to the website between May 1995 and September 2003.
Line count: 10
Word count: 51