LiederNet logo

CONTENTS

×
  • Home | Introduction
  • Composers (20,102)
  • Text Authors (19,442)
  • Go to a Random Text
  • What’s New
  • A Small Tour
  • FAQ & Links
  • Donors
  • DONATE

UTILITIES

  • Search Everything
  • Search by Surname
  • Search by Title or First Line
  • Search by Year
  • Search by Collection

CREDITS

  • Emily Ezust
  • Contributors (1,114)
  • Contact Information
  • Bibliography

  • Copyright Statement
  • Privacy Policy

Follow us on Facebook

by William Henry Davies (1871 - 1940)

Robin Redbreast
Language: English 
Robin on a leafless bough, 
Lord in Heaven, how he sings! 
Now cold Winter's cruel Wind 
Makes playmates of withered things. 

How he sings for joy this morn ! 
How his breast doth pant and glow! 
Look you how he stands and sings, 
Half-way up his legs in snow! 

If these crumbs of bread were pearls, 
And I had no bread at home, 
He should have them for that song; 
Pretty Robin Redbreast, Come. 

Text Authorship:

  • by William Henry Davies (1871 - 1940), "Robin Redbreast", appears in Nature Poems and Others, first published 1908 [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 Michael (Dewar) Head (1900 - 1976), "Robin Redbreast", published 1929 [high voice and piano], from Songs of the Countryside, no. 4. [
     text not verified 
    ]
  • by John Jeffreys (1927 - 2010), "Robin Redbreast" [voice and piano] [
     text not verified 
    ]
  • by Edmund Duncan Rubbra (1901 - 1986), "Robin Redbreast", published 1938 [unison children's chorus and piano], from Three Bird Songs [
     text not verified 
    ]

Researcher for this text: Emily Ezust [Administrator]

This text was added to the website: 2009-01-15
Line count: 12
Word count: 73

Gentle Reminder

This website began in 1995 as a personal project by Emily Ezust, who has been working on it full-time without a salary since 2008. Our research has never had any government or institutional funding, so if you found the information here useful, please consider making a donation. Your help is greatly appreciated!
–Emily Ezust, Founder

Donate

We use cookies for internal analytics and to earn much-needed advertising revenue. (Did you know you can help support us by turning off ad-blockers?) To learn more, see our Privacy Policy. To learn how to opt out of cookies, please visit this site.

I acknowledge the use of cookies

Contact
Copyright
Privacy

Copyright © 2025 The LiederNet Archive

Site redesign by Shawn Thuris