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by Alfred Edward Housman (1859 - 1936)

When summer's end is nighing
Language: English 
When summer's end is nighing
  And skies at evening cloud,
I muse on change and fortune
  And all the feats I vowed
  When I was young and proud.

The weathercock at sunset
  Would lose the slanted ray,
And I would climb the beacon
  That looked to Wales away
  And saw the last of day.

From hill and cloud and heaven
  The hues of evening died;
Night welled through lane and hollow
  And hushed the countryside,
  But I had youth and pride.

And I with earth and nightfall
  In converse high would stand,
Late, till the west was ashen
  And darkness hard at hand,
  And the eye lost the land.

The year might age, and cloudy
  The lessening day might close,
But air of other summers
  Breathed from beyond the snows,
  And I had hope of those.

They came and were and are not
  And come no more anew;
And all the years and seasons
  That ever can ensue
  Must now be worse and few.

So here's an end [of]1 roaming
  On eves when autumn nighs:
The ear too fondly listens
  For summer's parting sighs,
  And then the heart replies.

Available sung texts:   ← What is this?

•   R. Hugill 

R. Hugill sets stanzas 1, 3, 5-7

About the headline (FAQ)

View original text (without footnotes)
1 Hugill: "to"

Text Authorship:

  • by Alfred Edward Housman (1859 - 1936), no title, appears in Last Poems, no. 39, first published 1922 [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 Robert Hugill , "When summer's end is nighing", stanzas 1,3,5-7 [ baritone and piano ] [sung text checked 1 time]
  • by Charles Wilfred Orr (1893 - 1976), "Midsummer dance", 1957 [ [voice], violoncello and piano ], note: Stone Records included this piece in their The Complete C.W. Orr Songbook - Volume 1. The Auden text was added to Orr's work posthumously; it was originally scored for cello and piano.  [sung text checked 1 time]
  • by John Ramsden Williamson (1929 - 2015), "When summer's end is nighing" [ baritone and piano ] [sung text not yet checked]

Researcher for this text: Emily Ezust [Administrator]

This text was added to the website: 2008-12-13
Line count: 35
Word count: 189

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