LiederNet logo

CONTENTS

×
  • Home | Introduction
  • Composers (20,114)
  • Text Authors (19,495)
  • 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)

The weeping child
Language: English 
What makes thee weep so, little child, 
What cause hast thou for all this grief ? 
When thou art old much cause may be, 
And tears will bring thee no relief. 

Thou dost not know thy mother yet, 
Thou'dst sleep on any bosom near; 
Thou dost not see a daughter dying, 
No son is coughing in thy ear. 

Thy father is a bearded man. 
Yet any bearded man could take 
Thee in his arms, and thou not know 
Which man would die for thy sweet sake. 

What makes thee weep then, little child, 
What cause hast thou for all this bother; 
Whose father could be any man, 
And any woman be thy mother? 

Text Authorship:

  • by William Henry Davies (1871 - 1940), "The weeping child", appears in The Bird of Paradise and Other Poems, first published 1914 [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 Richard Roderick-Jones (b. 1947), "The weeping child", 1966 [ soprano or tenor and piano ], from The weeping child [sung text not yet checked]

Researcher for this text: Emily Ezust [Administrator]

This text was added to the website: 2009-01-15
Line count: 16
Word count: 112

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