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by Amy Lowell (1874 - 1925)

Petals
Language: English 
Life is a stream
On which we strew
Petal by petal the flower of our heart;
The end lost in dream,
They float past our view,
We only watch their glad, early start.

Freighted with hope,
Crimsoned with joy,
We scatter the leaves of our opening rose;
Their widening scope,
Their distant employ,
We never shall know.  And the stream as it flows
Sweeps them away,
Each one is gone
Ever beyond into infinite ways.
We alone stay
While years hurry on,
The flower fared forth, though its fragrance still stays. 

Text Authorship:

  • by Amy Lowell (1874 - 1925), "Petals", appears in A Dome of Many-Coloured Glass, first published 1912 [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 James H. Case (b. 1932), "Petals" [SSA chorus a cappella] [
     text not verified 
    ]

Researcher for this text: Emily Ezust [Administrator]

This text was added to the website: 2005-12-15
Line count: 18
Word count: 91

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