Song Cycle by Robert E. Ward (1917-)

1. Pied Beauty

Authorship

by Gerard Manley Hopkins (1844-1889) , from Poems of Gerard Manley Hopkins, published 1918

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Glory be to God for dappled things --
For skies of couple-color as a brindled cow;
For rose-moles all in stipple upon trout that swim
Fresh-firecoal chestnut-falls; finches' wings;
Landscape plotted and pieced -- fold, fallow and trim. 
[And áll trádes, their gear and tackle and trim.]1

[Glory be to God for dappled things]2
All things counter, original, spare, strange;
Whatever is fickle, freckled (who knows how?)
  with swift, slow; sweet, sour; adazzle, dim;
He fathers forth whose beauty is past change:
Praise him.

2. Little things

Authorship

by James Stephens (1882-1950) , "Little things", from Little Things, published 1924, copyright ©

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Little things that run and quail
 [ ... ]

3. Intoxication

Authorship

by Emily Dickinson (1830-1886) , no title, from Poems of Emily Dickinson, published 1890

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I taste a liquor never brewed,
From tankards scooped in pearl;
Not all the vats upon the Rhine
Yield such an alcohol!

Inebriate of air am I,
And debauchee of dew,
Reeling, through endless summer days,
From inns of molten blue.

When landlords turn the drunken bee
Out of the foxglove's door,
When butterflies renounce their drams,
I shall but drink the more!

Till seraphs swing their snowy hats,
And saints to windows run,
To see the little tippler
Learning against the sun!

4. Heaven-Haven

Authorship

by Gerard Manley Hopkins (1844-1889) , "Heaven-Haven", from Lyra Sacra: A Book of Religious Verse, published 1895

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I have desired to go
Where springs not fail,
To fields where flies no sharp and sided hail
And a few lilies blow.

And I have asked to be
Where no storms come,
Where the green swell is in the havens dumb,
And out of the swing of the sea.

5. God's Grandeur

Authorship

by Gerard Manley Hopkins (1844-1889) , "God's Grandeur", from Lyra Sacra: A Book of Religious Verse, published 1895

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The world is charged with the grandeur of God.
It will flame out, like shining from shook foil;
It gathers to a greatness, like the ooze of oil 
Crushed. Why do men then now not reck his rod? 
Generations have trod, have trod, have trod;
And all is seared with trade; bleared, smeared with toil; 
And wears man's smudge and shares man's smell: the soil 
Is bare now, nor can foot feel, being shod.

And for all this, nature is never spent;
There lives the dearest freshness deep down things;
And though the last lights off the black West went 
Oh, morning, at the brown brink eastward, springs -- 
Because the Holy Ghost over the bent   
World broods with warm breast and with ah! bright wings.

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