Brian Holmes: Emily's Day (The Lied and Art Song Texts Page: Texts and Translations to Lieder, mélodies, canzoni, and other classical vocal music)


Will there really be a morning?
Is there such a thing as day?
Could I see it from the mountains
If I were as tall as they?

Has it feet like water-lilies?
Has it feathers like a bird?
Is it brought from famous countries
Of which I have never heard?

Oh, some scholar! Oh, some sailor!
Oh, some wise man from the skies!
Please to tell a little pilgrim
Where the place called morning lies!

2. The robin is the one

Language: English

Authorship

Emily Dickinson (1830-1886)


The robin is the one
That interrupts the morn
With hurried, few, express reports
When March is scarcely on.
  
The robin is the one
That overflows the noon
With her cherubic quantity,
An April but begun.
  
The robin is the one
That speechless from her nest
Submits that home and certainty
And sanctity are best.

Input by Brian Holmes

3. I'm nobody!

Language: English

Authorship

Emily Dickinson (1830-1886)

Poems by Emily Dickinson

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Available translations (or transliterations, if applicable):

GER

German

ITA

Italian


I'm nobody! Who are you?
Are you nobody, too?
Then there's a pair of us - don't tell!
They'd [banish us]¹, you know.

How dreary to be somebody!
How public, like a frog
To tell [your]² name the livelong [day]³
To an admiring bog!

View text without footnotes
¹ G. Coates: "advertise"
² G. Coates: "one's
³ G. Coates: "June"

4. A narrow fellow in the grass

Language: English

Authorship

Emily Dickinson (1830-1886)


A narrow fellow in the grass
Occasionally rides;
You may have met him, -- did you not,
His notice sudden is.

The grass divides as with a comb,
A spotted shaft is seen;
And then it closes at your feet
And opens further on.

He likes a boggy acre,
A floor too cool for corn.
Yet when a child, and barefoot,
I more than once, at morn,

Have passed, I thought, a whip-lash
Unbraiding in the sun, --
When, stooping to secure it,
It wrinkled, and was gone.

Several of nature's people
I know, and they know me;
I feel for them a transport
Of cordiality;

But never met this fellow,
Attended or alone,
Without a tighter breathing,
And zero at the bone.

Input by Brian Holmes

5. Some keep the Sabbath going to church

Language: English

Authorship

Emily Dickinson (1830-1886)

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Some keep the Sabbath going to church;
I keep it staying at home,
With a bobolink for a chorister,
And an orchard for a dome. 

Some keep the Sabbath in surplice;
I just wear my wings,
And instead of tolling the bell for church,
Our little sexton sings. 

God preaches, - a noted clergyman, -
And the sermon is never long;
So instead of getting to heaven at last,
I'm going all along!

6. The crickets sang

Language: English

Authorship

Emily Dickinson (1830-1886)

Poems by Emily Dickinson

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The crickets sang,
And set the sun,
And workmen finished, one by one,
Their seam the day upon.

The low grass loaded with the dew,
The twilight stood as strangers do
With hat in hand, polite and new,
To stay as if, or go.

A vastness, as a neighbor, came, -
A wisdom without face or name,
A peace, as hemispheres at home, -
And so the night became.