by Emily Brontë (1818 - 1848)
How clear she shines!
Language: English
How clear she shines! How quietly I lie beneath her [silver]1 light While Heaven and Earth are whispering to me "Tomorrow wake, but dream tonight." [Yes fancy come, my spirit love! These throbbing temples, softly kiss, And bend my lonely couch above And bring me rest.]2 While gazing on the stars that glow Above me in that stormless sea I long to hope that all the woe Creation knows is held in thee! And this shall be my dream tonight I'll think the heav'n of glorious spheres Is rolling on its course of light In endless bliss, through endless years. [I'll think there's not one world above Far as these straining eyes can see Where wisdom ever laughed at Love Or Virtue crouched to Infamy Where pleasure still will lead to wrong And helpless reason warn in vain And truth is weak, and treachery strong And joy the shortest path to pain And peace the lethargy of grief And hope a phantom of the soul And life a labour void and brief And death the despot of the whole]3
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View original text (without footnotes)Note: in the Fisk work, this is sung by Edgar
1 Fisk: "guardian"
2 omitted by Fisk
3 omitted by Mitchell
Text Authorship:
- by Emily Brontë (1818 - 1848), "How clear she shines", from Poems by Currer, Ellis, and Acton Bell, first published 1846 [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 Terry Fisk , "How clear she shines", published 2002 [voice, piano], from Wuthering Heights, no. 30. [text verified 1 time]
- by Alfred Jepson , "How clear she shines", published 1962? [voice, piano] [text not verified]
- by John Mitchell (b. 1941), "How Clear She Shines", op. 17 no. 9 (1976), from Visions from the Earth, no. 9. [text verified 1 time]
Researcher for this page: Victoria Brago
This text was added to the website between May 1995 and September 2003.
Line count: 28
Word count: 179