Sir Edward Elgar: Sea Pictures (The Lied and Art Song Texts Page: Texts and Translations to Lieder, mélodies, canzoni, and other classical vocal music)


 Sea-birds are asleep,
 The world forgets to weep,
 Sea murmurs her soft slumber-song
 On the shadowy sand
 Of this elfin land;

 I, the Mother mild, 
 Hush thee, oh my child,
 Forget the voices wild!
 Hush thee, oh my child,
 Hush thee.

 Isles in elfin light
 Dream, the rocks and caves,
 Lulled by whispering waves,
 Veil their marbles
   Veil their marbles bright.
 Foam glimmers faintly
   faintly white
 Upon the shelly sand
 Of this elfin land;

 Sea-sound, like violins,
 To slumber woos and wins,
 I murmur my soft slumber-song,
	my slumber song
 Leave woes, and wails, and sins.

 Ocean's shadowy might
 Breathes good night,
 Good night...
 Leave woes, and wails, and sins.
 Good night...Good night...
 Good night...

 Good night...

 Good night...  Good night.

2. In Haven (Capri)

Language: English

Authorship

Caroline Alice Elgar, née Roberts (1848-1920)

Set in a modified version by

Sir Edward Elgar (1857-1934)


Closely let me hold thy hand,
   Storms are sweeping sea and land;
Love alone will stand.

Closely cling, for waves beat fast,
   Foam-flakes cloud the hurrying blast;
Love alone will last.

Kiss my lips, and softly say:
   Joy, sea-swept, may fade to-day;
Love alone will stay.

3. Sabbath Morning at Sea

Language: English

Authorship

Elizabeth Barrett Browning (1806-1861)

Available translations (or transliterations, if applicable):

GER

German

GER

German


The ship went on with solemn face;
To meet the darkness on the deep,
The solemn ship went onward.
I bowed down weary in the place;
for parting tears and present sleep
Had weighed mine eyelids downward.

The new sight, the new wondrous sight!
The waters around me, turbulent,
The skies, impassive o'er me,
Calm in a moonless, sunless light,
As glorified by even the intent
Of holding the day glory!

Love me, sweet friends, this sabbath day.
The sea sings round me while ye roll afar
The hymn, unaltered,
And kneel, where once I knelt to pray,
And bless me deeper in your soul
Because your voice has faltered.

And though this sabbath comes to me
Without the stolèd minister,
And chanting congregation,
God's Spirit shall give comfort. 
He who brooded soft on waters drear,
Creator on creation.

He shall assist me to look higher,
	He shall assist me to look higher,
Where keep the saints, with harp and song,
An endless endless sabbath morning,
	An endless sabbath morning,
And on that sea commixed with fire,
	On that sea commixed with fire,
Oft drop their eyelids raised too long
To the full Godhead's burning.
	The full Godhead's burning.

4. Where corals lie

Language: English

Authorship

Richard Garnett (1835-1906)

Available translations (or transliterations, if applicable):

ITA

Italian


The deeps have music soft and low
When winds awake the airy spry,
It lures me, lures me on to go
And see the land where corals lie.
	 The land, the land where corals lie.

By mount and mead, by lawn and rill,
When night is deep, and moon is high,
That music seeks and finds me still,
And tells me where the corals lie.
	 And tells me where the corals lie.

Yes, press my eyelids close, 'tis well,
	 Yes, press my eyelids close, 'tis well,
But far the rapid fancies fly
The rolling worlds of wave and shell,
And all the lands where corals lie.

Thy lips are like a sunset glow,
Thy smile is like a morning sky,
Yet leave me, leave me, let me go
And see the land where corals lie.
	 The land, the land where corals lie.

5. The swimmer

Language: English

Authorship

Adam Lindsay Gordon (1833-1870)


1. With short, sharp violent lights made vivid,
To southward far as the sight can roam,
Only the swirl of the surges livid,
The seas that climb and the surfs that comb.
Only the crag and the cliff to nor'ward,
[And]¹ The rocks receding, and reefs flung forward,
Waifs wreck'd seaward and wasted shoreward,
On shallows sheeted with flaming foam.

2. A grim, gray coast and a seaboard ghastly,
And shores trod seldom by feet of men -
Where the batter'd hull and the broken mast lie,
They have lain embedded these long years ten.
Love! when we wandered here together,
Hand in hand through the sparkling weather,
From the heights and hollows of fern and heather,
God surely loved us a little then.

3. The skies were fairer, the shores were firmer -
The blue sea over the bright sand roll'd;
Babble and prattle, and ripple and murmur,
Sheen of silver and glamour of gold.
And the sunset bath'd in the gulf to lend her
A garland of pinks and of purples tender,
A tinge of the sun-god's rosy splendour,
A tithe of his glories manifold.

4. Man's works are graven, cunning, and skilful
On earth, where his tabernacles are;
But the sea is wanton, the sea is wilful,
And who shall mend her and who shall mar?
Shall we carve success or record disaster
On the bosom of her heaving alabaster?
Will her purple pulse beat fainter or faster
For fallen sparrow or fallen star?

5. I would that with sleepy, soft embraces
The sea would fold me -- would find me rest,
In luminous shades of her secret places,
In depths where her marvels are manifest;
So the earth beneath her should not discover
My hidden couch -- nor the heaven above her --
As a strong love shielding a weary lover,
I would have her shield me with shining breast.

6. When light in the realms of space lay hidden,
When life was yet in the womb of time,
Ere flesh was fettered to fruits forbidden,
And souls were wedded to care and crime,
Was the course foreshaped for the future spirit --
A burden of folly, a void of merit --
That would fain the wisdom of stars inherit,
And cannot fathom the seas sublime?]¹

7. Under the sea or the soil (what matter?
The sea and the soil are under the sun),
As in the former days in the latter,
The sleeping or waking is known of none.
Surely the sleeper shall not awaken
To griefs forgotten or joys forsaken,
For the price of all things given and taken,
The sum of all things done and undone.

8. Shall we count offences or coin excuses,
Or weigh with scales the soul of a man,
Whom a strong hand binds and a sure hand looses,
Whose light is a spark and his life a span?
The seed he sow'd or the soil he cumber'd,
The time he served or the space he slumber'd,
Will it profit a man when his days are number'd,
Or his deeds since the days of his life began?]

9. One, glad because of the light, saith, "Shall not
The righteous Judge of all the earth do right,
For behold the sparrows on the house-tops fall not
Save as seemeth to Him good in His sight?"
And this man's joy shall have no abiding,
Through lights departing and lives dividing,
He is soon as one in the darkness hiding,
One loving darkness rather than light.

10. A little season of love and laughter,
Of light and life, and pleasure and pain,
And a horror of outer darkness after,
And dust returneth to dust again.
Then the lesser life shall be as the greater,
And the lover of life shall join the hater,
And the one thing cometh sooner or later,
And no one knoweth the loss or gain.

11. Love of my life! we had lights in season --
Hard to part from, harder to keep --
We had strength to labour and souls to reason,
And seed to scatter and fruits to reap.
Though time estranges and fate disperses,
We have HAD our loves and our loving mercies;
Though the gifts of the light in the end are curses,
Yet bides the gift of the darkness -- sleep!

12. So girt with tempest and wing'd with thunder,
And clad with lightning and shod with sleet,
The strong winds treading the swift waves under
The flying rollers with frothy feet.
One gleam like a bloodshot sword-blade swims on
The sky-line, staining the green gulf crimson,
A death stroke fiercely dealt by a dim sun,
That strikes through his stormy winding-sheet.

13. O, brave white horses! you gather and gallop,
The storm sprite loosens the gusty reins;
Now the stoutest ship were the frailest shallop
In your hollow backs, on your high arch'd manes.
I would ride as never [a]¹ man has ridden
In your sleepy, swirling surges hidden,
To gulfs foreshadow'd thro' strifes forbidden,
Where no light wearies and no love wanes.

View text without footnotes
¹ omitted by Elgar.