by Emily Dickinson (1830 - 1886)
The sky is low, the clouds are mean
Language: English
The sky is low, the clouds are mean, A travelling flake of snow Across a barn or through a rut Debates if it will go. A narrow wind complains all day How some one treated him; Nature, like us, is sometimes caught Without her diadem.
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Text Authorship:
- by Emily Dickinson (1830 - 1886), no title, appears in Poems of Emily Dickinson, first published 1890 [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 Ronald A. Beckett , "The sky is low", from My Letter to the world, no. 2 [sung text not yet checked]
- by Anthony Iannaccone (b. 1943), "The sky is low, the clouds are mean", published 1979 [ mixed chorus a cappella ] [sung text not yet checked]
- by Richard Layton Kent (b. 1916), "The sky is low, the clouds are mean", published 1966 [ SSA chorus and piano ], from Autumn songs, no. 3, New York: Lawson-Gould [sung text not yet checked]
Available translations, adaptations or excerpts, and transliterations (if applicable):
- FRE French (Français) (Guy Laffaille) , "Le Ciel est bas -- les Nuages ont l'air méchants", copyright © 2019, (re)printed on this website with kind permission
- GER German (Deutsch) (Walter A. Aue) , copyright © 2010, (re)printed on this website with kind permission
- GER German (Deutsch) (Bertram Kottmann) , copyright © 2019, (re)printed on this website with kind permission
Researcher for this text: Emily Ezust [Administrator]
This text was added to the website between May 1995 and September 2003.
Line count: 8
Word count: 45