Vertue | Virtue | Sweet day, so cool, so calm, so bright

Sweet day, so cool, so calm, so bright

Language: English

Our translations: FRE

Sweet day, so cool, so calm, so bright,
The bridall of the earth and skie:
The dew shall weep thy fall to night;
                                    For thou must die.

Sweet rose, whose hue angrie and brave
Bids the rash gazer wipe his eye:
Thy root is ever in its grave
                                    And thou must die.

Sweet spring, full of sweet dayes and roses,
A box where sweets compacted lie;
My musick shows ye have your closes,
                                    And all must die.

Onely a sweet and vertuous soul,
Like season'd timber, never gives;
But though the whole world turn to coal,
                                    Then chiefly lives.

Available sung texts: ← What is this?

• R. Vaughan Williams

R. Vaughan Williams sets stanzas 1, 3-4

About the headline (FAQ)

Text Authorship:

by George Herbert (1593 - 1633), "Vertue", appears in The Temple, first published 1633 [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 James Whitton Aikman (b. 1959), "Vertue" [ baritone and piano ] [sung text checked 1 time]
by Barney Childs (1926 - 2000), "Virtue" [sung text not yet checked]
by Matthew Emery (b. 1991), "Vertue" [ voice and piano ] [sung text checked 1 time]
by Olivier Greif (1950 - 2000), "Vertue", op. 310 no. 6 (1995) [ voice and piano ], from Les chants de l'âme, no. 6 [sung text not yet checked]
by Michael (Dewar) Head (1900 - 1976), "Sweet day! so cool", 1919, published 1921 [sung text not yet checked]
by Jeffrey Thomas King , "Virtue", 1965 [ SSA chorus a cappella ], unpublished [sung text not yet checked]
by Ann Sheppard Mounsey (1811 - 1891), "Sweet day so cool", published 1860 [ satb chorus ], London : Pitman [sung text not yet checked]
by Roxanna Panufnik (b. 1968), "Virtue", 1992 [ mezzo-soprano and string orchestra ], Peters Edition [sung text not yet checked]
by Nick Peros (b. 1963), "Virtue" [sung text checked 1 time]
by John Theodore Livingston Raynor (1909 - 1970), "Sweet Day", op. 615 (1962) [sung text not yet checked]
by Adam Taylor (b. 1981), "Sweet day", op. 28 no. 1 (2003) [ SSAA chorus a cappella ], from Four Songs of Calm, no. 1 [sung text not yet checked]
by Ralph Vaughan Williams (1872 - 1958), "Sweet day", 1896, stanzas 1,3-4 [sung text checked 1 time]

Available translations, adaptations or excerpts, and transliterations (if applicable):

GER German (Deutsch) (Richard Flatter) , "Die Seele", appears in Die Fähre, Englische Lyrik aus fünf Jahrhunderten, first published 1936

Researcher for this text: Emily Ezust [Administrator]

This text was added to the website between May 1995 and September 2003.
Line count: 16
Word count: 99