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by Emily Lawless (1845 - 1913)

The stranger's grave
Language: English 
Little feet too young and soft to walk,
Little lips too young and pure to talk,
Little faded grass-tufts, root and stalk.

I lie alone here, utterly alone,
Amid pure ashes my wild ashes mingle;
A drowned man, with a name unknown,
A drifting waif, flung by the drifting shingle.
Oh, plotting brain and restless heart of mine,
What strange fate brought you to so strange a shrine?

Sometimes a woman comes across the grass,
Bare-footed, with pit-patterings scarcely heard,
Sometimes the grazing cattle slowly pass,
Or on my turf sings loud some mating bird.
Oh, plotting brain and restless heart of mine,
What strange fate brought you to so strange a shrine?

Little feet too young and soft to walk,
Little lips too young and pure to talk,
Little faded grass-tufts, root and stalk.

Text Authorship:

  • by Emily Lawless (1845 - 1913) [author's text not yet checked 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 Daron Aric Hagen (b. 1961), "The stranger's grave" [voice and piano], from Songs of Experience, no. 5. [
     text not verified 
    ]
  • by (Herbert) Hamilton Harty, Sir (1879 - 1941), "The stranger's grave" [voice and piano] [
     text verified 1 time
    ]

Researcher for this text: Emily Ezust [Administrator]

This text was added to the website: 2011-04-01
Line count: 18
Word count: 135

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