The rain had fallen, the Poet arose,
  He passed by the town, and out of the street,
A light wind blew from the gates of the sun,
  And waves of [shadow]1 went over the wheat,
And he [set]2 him down in a lonely place,
  And chanted a melody loud and sweet,
That made the wild-swan pause [in]3 her cloud,
  And the lark drop down at his feet.

The swallow stopt as he hunted the bee,
  The snake slipt under the spray,
The [hawk]4 stood with the down on his beak,
  And stared, with his foot on the prey,
And the nightingale thought, "I have sung many songs,
  But never a one so gay,
For he sings of what the world will be
  When the years have died away."

About the headline (FAQ)

View original text (without footnotes)
¹ Parry: "the shadow"
² Parry: "sat"
³ Parry: "on"
⁴ Parry: "wild hawk"

Authorship:

• by Alfred Tennyson, Lord (1809 - 1892), "The Poet's Song", appears in Poems, Volume II, first published 1842 [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 Edith A. Bracken , "The poet's song", published 1880 [ voice and piano ] [sung text not yet checked]
• by A. H. Cox , "The poet's song", published 1870 [ voice and piano ] [sung text not yet checked]
• by Dotie Davies, Mrs. André Charles Prosper Messager (1859 - 1938), as Hope Temple, "The poet's song", published 1882 [ voice and piano ] [sung text not yet checked]
• by Norman Dello Joio (1913 - 2008), "The poet's song", published 1974 [ SATB chorus and piano ] [sung text not yet checked]
• by Thomas Frederick Dunhill (1877 - 1946), "The poet's song", published c1937 [ unison chorus and piano ] [sung text not yet checked]
• by Cecil Armstrong Gibbs (1889 - 1960), "The poet's song", published 1938 [ SSA chorus and piano ] [sung text not yet checked]
• by C. Oliphant (Miss) , "The rain has fallen", published 1857 [ voice and piano ] [sung text not yet checked]
• by Charles Hubert Hastings Parry, Sir (1848 - 1918), "The Poet's Song", op. 12 no. 1 (c1873), published 1873 [ voice and piano ], from Three Songs, no. 1 [sung text checked 1 time]
• by Sidney Thomson , "The poet's song", published 1893 [ mezzo-soprano and piano ], from Seven songs [sung text not yet checked]
• by Sidney Peine Waddington (1869 - 1953), "The poet's song", published 1909 [ SA chorus and piano ] [sung text not yet checked]

Researcher for this text: Ted Perry

This text was added to the website between May 1995 and September 2003.
Line count: 16
Word count: 128