Song Cycle by Jay Poûhe (1935-)

1. Women have loved before as I love now

Authorship

by Edna St. Vincent Millay (1892-1950) , no title, from Fatal Interview, published 1931, copyright ©

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Women have loved before as I love now
 [ ... ]

2. Now by this moon, before this moon shall wane

Authorship

by Edna St. Vincent Millay (1892-1950) , no title, from Fatal Interview, published 1931, copyright ©

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Now by this moon, before this moon shall wane
 [ ... ]

3. Humoresque

Authorship

by Edna St. Vincent Millay (1892-1950) , from The Harp-Weaver and other poems, published 1923, copyright ©

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Heaven bless the babe!" they said
 [ ... ]

4. I too beneath your moon, almighty Sex

Authorship

by Edna St. Vincent Millay (1892-1950) , from Huntsman, What Quarry?, published 1939, copyright ©

I too beneath your moon, almighty Sex
 [ ... ]

5. Oh, think not I am faithful to a vow!

Authorship

by Edna St. Vincent Millay (1892-1950) , no title, from A Few Figs from Thistles, published 1920

Oh, think not I am faithful to a vow!
Faithless am I save to love's self alone.
Were you not lovely I would leave you now:
After the feet of beauty fly my own.
Were you not still my hunger's rarest food,
And water ever to my wildest thirst,
I would desert you -- think not but I would! --
And seek another as I sought you first.
But you are mobile as the veering air,
And all your charms more changeful than the tide,
Wherefore to be inconstant is no care:
I have but to continue at your side.
So wanton, light and false, my love, are you,
I am most faithless when I most am true.

6. And you as well must die, beloved dust

Authorship

by Edna St. Vincent Millay (1892-1950) , no title, from Second April, published 1921

And you as well must die, beloved dust,
And all your beauty stand you in no stead;
This flawless, vital hand, this perfect head,
This body of flame and steel, before the gust
Of Death, or under his autumnal frost,
Shall be as any leaf, be no less dead
Than the first leaf that fell,--this wonder fled.
Altered, estranged, disintegrated, lost.
Nor shall my love avail you in your hour.
In spite of all my love, you will arise
Upon that day and wander down the air
Obscurely as the unattended flower,
It mattering not how beautiful you were,
Or how beloved above all else that dies.

7. What lips my lips have kissed, and where, and why

Authorship

by Edna St. Vincent Millay (1892-1950) , "Sonnet XLIII", from The Harp-Weaver and other poems, in Sonnets from an Ungrafted Tree, published 1923

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What lips my lips have kissed, and where, and why,
I have forgotten, and what arms have lain
Under my head till morning; but the rain
Is full of ghosts tonight, that tap and sigh
Upon the glass and listen for reply,
And in my heart there stirs a quiet pain
For unremembered lads that not again
Will turn to me at midnight with a cry.
Thus in winter stands the lonely tree,
Nor knows what birds have vanished one by one,
Yet knows its boughs more silent than before:
I cannot say what loves have come and gone,
I only know that summer sang in me
A little while, that in me sings no more.

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