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

by Gerard Manley Hopkins (1844 - 1889)

The Leaden Echo and the Golden Echo
Language: English 
The Leaden Echo
How to keep – is there ány any, is there none such, nowhere
  known some, bow or brooch or braid or brace, láce, latch
  or catch or key to keep
Back beauty, keep it, beauty, beauty, beauty, . . . from vanishing
  away?

Ó is there no frowning of these wrinkles, rankèd wrinkles deep,
Dówn? no waving off of these most mournful messengers, still
  messengers, sad and stealing messengers of grey?
No there’s none, there’s none, O no there’s none,
Nor can you long be, what you now are, called fair,
Do what you may do, what, do what you may,
And wisdom is early to despair:
Be beginning; since, no, nothing can be done
To keep at bay
Age and age’s evils, hoar hair,
Ruck and wrinkle, drooping, dying, death’s worst, winding
  sheets, tombs and worms and tumbling to decay;
So be beginning, be beginning to despair.
O there’s none; no no no there’s none:
Be beginning to despair, to despair,
Despair, despair, despair, despair.

The Golden Echo
  Spare!
There is one, yes I have one (Hush there!);
Only not within seeing of the sun,
Not within the singeing of the strong sun,
Tall sun’s tingeing, or treacherous the tainting of the earth’s air.
Somewhere elsewhere there is ah well where! one,
Óne. Yes I can tell such a key, I do know such a place,
Where whatever’s prized and passes of us, everything that’s
  fresh and fast flying of us, seems to us sweet of us and
  swiftly away with, done away with, undone,
Undone, done with, soon done with, and yet dearly and
  dangerously sweet
Of us, the wimpled-water-dimpled, not-by-morning-matchèd face,
The flower of beauty, fleece of beauty, too too apt to, ah! to fleet,
Never fleets more, fastened with the tenderest truth
To its own best being and its loveliness of youth: it is an ever-
  lastingness of, O it is an all youth!
Come then, your ways and airs and looks, locks, maiden gear,
  gallantry and gaiety and grace,
Winning ways, airs innocent, maiden manners, sweet looks,
  loose locks, long locks, lovelocks, gaygear, going gallant,
  girlgrace –
Resign them, sign them, seal them, send them, motion them
  with breath,
And with sighs soaring, soaring síghs deliver
Them; beauty-in-the-ghost, deliver it, early now, long before
  death
Give beauty back, beauty, beauty, beauty, back to God, beauty’s
  self and beauty’s giver.
See; not a hair is, not an eyelash, not the least lash lost; every hair
Is, hair of the head, numbered.
Nay, what we had lighthanded left in surly the mere mould
Will have waked and have waxed and have walked with the wind
  what while we slept,
This side, that side hurling a heavyheaded hundredfold
What while we, while we slumbered.
O then, weary then whý should we tread? O why are we so
  haggard at the heart, so care-coiled, care-killed, so fagged,
  so fashed, so cogged, so cumbered,
When the thing we freely fórfeit is kept with fonder a care,
Fonder a care kept than we could have kept it, kept
Far with fonder a care (and we, we should have lost it) finer, fonder
A care kept. Where kept? Do but tell us where kept, where. –
Yonder. – What high as that! We follow, now we follow. –
  Yonder, yes yonder, yonder,
Yonder.

Text Authorship:

  • by Gerard Manley Hopkins (1844 - 1889), "The Leaden Echo and the Golden Echo", subtitle: "Maidens’ song from St. Winefred’s Well" [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 Egon Joseph Wellesz (1885 - 1974), "The Leaden Echo and the Golden Echo", op. 61 (1944) [ soprano, violin, clarinet, cello, piano ] [sung text not yet checked]

Researcher for this text: Emily Ezust [Administrator]

This text was added to the website: 2022-08-25
Line count: 69
Word count: 554

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