[Withouten]1 you
No rose can grow;
No leaf be green
If never seen
Your sweetest face;
No bird have grace
Or [power]2 to sing;
Or anything
Be kind, or fair,
And you nowhere.

View original text (without footnotes)
¹ Rorem: "Without"
² Duke, Howe: "pow'r"

Text Authorship:

• by Elinor Wylie (1885 - 1928), "Little elegy", appears in Angels and Earthly Creatures: A Sequence of Sonnets, first published 1929 [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 Arthur Edward Drummond Bliss, Sir (1891 - 1975), "Little elegy", 1940, published 1942, first performed 1941 [ low voice and piano ], from Seven American Poems, no. 4 [sung text not yet checked]
• by John Woods Duke (1899 - 1984), "Little elegy", 1946, published 1959 [ soprano or tenor and piano ], from Two songs, no. 1, G. Schirmer [sung text checked 1 time]
• by Mary (Carlisle) Howe (1882 - 1964), "Little elegy", published 1939 [ voice and piano ], San Antonio, TX: Southern Music Company [sung text checked 1 time]
• by Ned Rorem (1923 - 2022), "Little elegy", published 1952 [ medium voice and piano ], from Two songs, no. 1 [sung text checked 1 time]
• by Anthony Strilko (b. 1931), "Little elegy", published 1962 [ high voice and piano ] [sung text not yet checked]

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

• GER German (Deutsch) [singable] (Bertram Kottmann) , "Klagelied", copyright © 2011, (re)printed on this website with kind permission

Research team for this page: Ted Perry , Garrett Medlock [Guest Editor]

This text was added to the website between May 1995 and September 2003.
Line count: 10
Word count: 35