by Alfred Tennyson, Lord (1809 - 1892)
To Sleep I give my powers away
Language: English
To Sleep I give my powers away; My will is bondsman to the dark; I sit within a helmless bark, And with my heart I muse and say: O heart, how fares it with thee now, That thou should'st fail from thy desire, Who scarcely darest to inquire, "What is it makes me beat so low?" Something it is which thou hast lost, Some pleasure from thine early years. Break, thou deep vase of chilling tears, That grief hath shaken into frost! Such clouds of nameless trouble cross All night below the darken'd eyes; With morning wakes the will, and cries, "Thou shalt not be the fool of loss."
L. Lehmann sets stanzas 1-3
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Text Authorship:
- by Alfred Tennyson, Lord (1809 - 1892), no title, written 1849, appears in In Memoriam A. H. H. obiit MDCCCXXXIII, no. 4, first published 1850 [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 Liza Lehmann (1862 - 1918), "To Sleep I give my powers away", 1899, stanzas 1-3 [ voice and piano ], from In Memoriam, no. 10 [sung text checked 1 time]
Researcher for this text: Emily Ezust [Administrator]
This text was added to the website: 2009-01-12
Line count: 16
Word count: 109