Song Cycle by David Leo Diamond (1915-2005)

1. Shall I compare thee to a summer's day

Authorship

by William Shakespeare (1564-1616) , no title, from Sonnets, no. 18

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Available translations (or transliterations, if applicable):

ITA Italian (Ferdinando Albeggiani)
FIN Finnish (Erkki Pullinen)

Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?
Thou art more lovely and more temperate:
Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May,
And summer's lease hath all too short a date:
Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines,
And often is his gold complexion dimm'd;
And every fair from fair sometime declines,
By chance or nature's changing course untrimm'd;
But thy eternal summer shall not fade
Nor lose possession of that fair thou ow'st;
Nor shall Death brag thou wander'st in his shade,
When in eternal lines to time thou growest:
  So long as men can breathe or eyes can see,
  So long lives this, and this gives life to thee.

2. Let me confess that we two must be twain

Authorship

by William Shakespeare (1564-1616) , no title, from Sonnets, no. 36

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Available translations (or transliterations, if applicable):

ITA Italian (Ferdinando Albeggiani)

Let me confess that we two must be twain,
Although our undivided loves are one:
So shall those blots that do with me remain
Without thy help by me be borne alone.
In our two loves there is but one respect,
Though in our lives a separable spite,
Which though it alter not love's sole effect,
Yet doth it steal sweet hours from love's delight.
I may not evermore acknowledge thee,
Lest my bewailed guilt should do thee shame,
Nor thou with public kindness honour me,
Unless thou take that honour from thy name:
But do not so; I love thee in such sort
As, thou being mine, mine is thy good report.

3. Those pretty wrongs that liberty commits

Authorship

by William Shakespeare (1564-1616) , no title, from Sonnets, no. 41

Those pretty wrongs that liberty commits,
When I am sometime absent from thy heart,
Thy beauty and thy years full well befits,
For still temptation follows where thou art.
Gentle thou art and therefore to be won,
Beauteous thou art, therefore to be assailed;
And when a woman woos, what woman's son
Will sourly leave her till she have prevailed?
Ay me, but yet thou might'st my seat forbear,
And chide thy beauty and thy straying youth,
Who lead thee in their riot even there
Where thou art forced to break a twofold truth:
Hers by thy beauty tempting her to thee,
Thine, by thy beauty being false to me.

4. For shame deny that thou bear'st love to any

Authorship

by William Shakespeare (1564-1616) , no title, from Sonnets, no. 10

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For shame deny that thou bear'st love to any,
Who for thyself art so unprovident:
Grant, if thou wilt, thou art belov'd of many,
But that thou none lov'st is most evident:
For thou art so possess'd with murd'rous hate
That 'gainst thyself thou stick'st not to conspire.
Seeking that beauteous roof to ruinate
Which to repair should be thy chief desire.
O, change thy thought, that I may change my mind!
Shall hate be fairer lodg'd than gentle love?
Be, as thy presence is, gracious and kind,
Or to thyself at least kind-hearted prove:
Make thee another self, for love of me,
That beauty still may live in thine or thee.

5. O from what power hast thou this powerful might

Authorship

by William Shakespeare (1564-1616) , no title, from Sonnets, no. 150

O from what power hast thou this powerful might
With insufficiency my heart to sway?
To make me give the lie to my true sight,
And swear that brightness doth not grace the day?
Whence hast thou this becoming of things ill,
That in the very refuse of thy deeds
There is such strength and warrantise of skill
That, in my mind, thy worst all best exceeds?
Who taught thee how to make me love thee more
The more I hear and see just cause of hate?
O, though I love what others do abhor,
With others thou shouldst not abhor my state:
If thy unworthiness rais'd love in me,
More worthy I to be belov'd of thee.

6. My love is as a fever, longing still

Authorship

by William Shakespeare (1564-1616) , no title, from Sonnets, no. 147

Available translations (or transliterations, if applicable):

ITA Italian (Ferdinando Albeggiani)

My love is as a fever, longing still
For that which longer nurseth the disease,
Feeding on that which doth preserve the ill,
Th'uncertain sickly appetite to please.
My reason, the physician to my love,
Angry that his prescriptions are not kept,
Hath left me, and I desperate now approve
Desire is death, which physic did except.
Past cure I am, now reason is past care,
And frantic mad with evermore unrest;
My thoughts and my discourse as madmen's are,
At random from the truth vainly express'd;
For I have sworn thee fair and thought thee bright,
Who art as black as hell, as dark as night.

7. No longer mourn for me when I am dead

Authorship

by William Shakespeare (1564-1616) , from Sonnets, no. 71

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Available translations (or transliterations, if applicable):

ITA Italian (Ferdinando Albeggiani)

No longer mourn for me when I am dead
Than you shall hear the surly sullen bell
Give warning to the world that I am fled
From this vile world, with vilest worms to dwell:
Nay, if you read this line, remember not
The hand that writ it; for I love you so,
That I in your sweet thoughts would be forgot,
If thinking on me then should make you woe.
O, if (I say) you look upon this verse,
When I perchance compounded am with clay,
Do not so much as my poor name rehearse;
But let your love e'en with my life decay:
  Lest the wise world should look into your moan,
  And mock you with me after I am gone.

8. When in disgrace with fortune and men's eyes

Authorship

by William Shakespeare (1564-1616) , no title, from Sonnets, no. 29

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Available translations (or transliterations, if applicable):

ITA Italian (Ferdinando Albeggiani)

When, in disgrace with fortune and men's eyes,
I all alone beweep my outcast state
And trouble deaf heaven with my bootless cries
And look upon myself and curse my fate,
Wishing me like to one more rich in hope,
Featured like him, like him with friends possess'd,
Desiring this man's art and that man's scope,
With what I most enjoy contented least;
Yet in these thoughts myself almost despising,
Haply I think on thee, and then my state,
Like to the lark at break of day arising
From sullen earth, sings hymns at heaven's gate;
  For thy sweet love remember'd such wealth brings
  That then I scorn to change my state with kings.

9. When to the sessions of sweet silent thought

Authorship

by William Shakespeare (1564-1616) , no title, from Sonnets, no. 30

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Available translations (or transliterations, if applicable):

ITA Italian (Ferdinando Albeggiani)

When to the sessions of sweet silent thought
I summon up remembrance of things past,
I sigh the lack of many a thing I sought,
And with old woes new wail my dear time's waste:
Then can I drown an eye, unused to flow,
For precious friends hid in death's dateless night,
And weep afresh love's long since cancell'd woe,
And moan the expense of many a vanish'd sight:
Then can I grieve at grievances foregone,
And heavily from woe to woe tell o'er
The sad account of fore-bemoaned moan,
Which I new pay as if not paid before.
  But if the while I think on thee, dear friend,
  All losses are restored and sorrows end.

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