by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1807 - 1882)
Out of the bosom of the Air
Language: English
Out of the bosom of the Air,
Out of the cloud-folds of her garments shaken,
Over the woodlands brown and bare,
Over the harvest-fields forsaken,
Silent, and soft, and slow
Descends the snow.
Even as our cloudy fancies take
Suddenly shape [in]1 some divine expression,
Even as the troubled heart doth make
In the white countenance confession,
The troubled sky reveals
The grief it feels.
This is the poem of the air,
Slowly in silent syllables recorded;
This is the secret of despair,
Long in its cloudy bosom hoarded,
Now whispered and revealed
To wood and field.
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Authorship
- by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1807 - 1882), "Snow-Flakes", appears in The Courtship of Miles Standish, and Other Poems, first published 1858 [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 Cottam , "Snow-Flakes" [ SATB chorus and piano ad libitum ] [sung text not yet checked]
- by Ivor (Bertie) Gurney (1890 - 1937), "Snow-Flakes", 1925 [ voice and piano ] [sung text not yet checked]
- by Christopher J. Hoh (b. 1959), "Snow-Flakes" [ SATB chorus and celesta ] [sung text checked 1 time]
- by Edwin A. Jones , "Snowflakes" [ voice and piano ] [sung text not yet checked]
- by James Lyon (1872 - 1949), "Snow flakes", op. 85 no. 1, published 1926 [ partsong for SA chorus or SS chorus and piano ] [sung text not yet checked]
- by Henry Théodore Pontet (1833 - 1902), "The snow-flakes", published 1870 [ voice and piano ], London, Chappell & Co. [sung text not yet checked]
- by Richard Stöhr (1874 - 1967), "Snowflakes", op. 104a (Ten Songs) no. 3 (1944), published 2015 [ voice and piano ], unpublished; manuscript at Saint Michael's College Archives and available in scanned form at the Petrucci Music Library [sung text checked 1 time]
- by Allen Roy Trubitt (b. 1931), "Snowflakes" [ SATB chorus ] [sung text not yet checked]
Research team for this text: Emily Ezust [Administrator] , Johann Winkler
This text was added to the website: 2008-06-24
Line count: 18
Word count: 97