Hamish MacCunn: Six songs (The Lied and Art Song Texts Page: Texts and Translations to Lieder, mélodies, canzoni, and other classical vocal music)


Angel spirits of sleep,
White-robed, with silver hair,
In your meadows fair,
Where the willows weep,
And the sad moonbeam
On the gliding stream
Writes her scatter'd dream:

Angel spirits of sleep,
Dancing to the weir
In the hollow roar
Of its waters deep;
Know ye how men say
That ye haunt no more
Isle and grassy shore
With your moonlit play;
That ye dance not here,
White-robed spirits of sleep,
All the summer night
Threading dances light?

?. Crown Winter with green

Language: English

Authorship

Robert Seymour Bridges (1844-1930)

The Shorter Poems of Robert Bridges

See other settings of this text


Crown Winter with green,
And give him good drink
To physic his spleen
Or ever he think.
 
His mouth to be bowl
His feet to the fire;
And let him, good soul,
No comfort desire.
 
So merry he be,
I bid him abide:
And merry be we
This good Yuletide.

Input by Ferdinando Albeggiani

?. My bed and pillow are cold

Language: English

Authorship

Robert Seymour Bridges (1844-1930)

The Shorter Poems of Robert Bridges


My bed and pillow are cold, 
My heart is faint with dread, 
The air hath an odour of mould, 
I dream I lie with the dead : 

I cannot move, 
O come to me, love, 
Or else I am dead. 

The feet I hear on the floor 
Tread heavily overhead: 
O Love, come down to the door, 
Gome, Love, come, ere I be dead : 

Make shine thy light, 
O Love, in the night; 
Or else I am dead.

?. Fire of heaven, whose starry arrow

Language: English

Authorship

Robert Seymour Bridges (1844-1930)

The Shorter Poems of Robert Bridges


Fire of heaven, whose starry arrow 
Pierces the veil of timeless night: 
Molten spheres, whose tempests narrow 
Their floods to a beam of gentle light: 
To charm with a moon-ray quenched from fire 
The land of delight, the land of desire ! 

Smile of love, a flower planted, 
Sprung in the garden of joy that art: 
Eyes that shine witha glow enchanted, 
Whose spreading fires encircle my heart, 
And warm with a noon-ray drenched in fire 
My land of delight, my land of desire !

?. The idle life I lead

Language: English

Authorship

Robert Seymour Bridges (1844-1930)

The Shorter Poems of Robert Bridges

See other settings of this text


The idle life I lead 
Is like a pleasant sleep, 
Wherein I rest and heed 
The dreams that by me sweep. 

And still of all my dreams 
In turn so swiftly past, 
Each in its fancy seems 
A nobler than the last. 

And every eve I say, 
Noting my step in bliss, 
That I have known no day 
In all my life like this.