Song Cycle by Samuel Coleridge-Taylor (1875-1912)

1. Earth fades! Heaven breaks on me

Authorship

by Robert Browning (1812-1889) , no title, from Strafford, Act V, Scene 2, published 1837

Earth fades! Heaven breaks on me: I shall stand next
Before God's throne: the moment's close at hand
When man the first, last time, has leave to lay
His whole heart bare before its Maker, leave
To clear up the long error of a life
And choose one happiness for evermore.

2. Substitution

Authorship

by Elizabeth Barrett Browning (1806-1861) , "Substitution"

When some belovèd voice that was to you
Both sound and sweetness, faileth suddenly,
And silence, against which you dare not cry,
Aches round you like a strong disease and new -
What hope ? what help ? what music will undo
That silence to your sense ? Not friendship's sigh,
Not reason's subtle count; not melody
Of viols, nor of pipes that Faunus blew;
Not songs of poets, nor of nightingales
Whose hearts leap upward through the cypress-trees
To the clear moon; nor yet the spheric laws
Self-chanted, nor the angels' sweet 'All hails,'
Met in the smile of God: nay, none of these.
Speak Thou, availing Christ! - and fill this pause.

3. Weep not, beloved friends

Authorship

by William Wordsworth (1770-1850) , no title, 1810?, from Epitaphs, no. 1, published 1837

a text in Italian by Gabriello Chiabrera (1552-1638) [text unavailable]

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Weep not, beloved Friends! nor let the air
For me with sighs be troubled. Not from life
Have I been taken; this is genuine life
And this alone--the life which now I live
In peace eternal; where desire and joy
Together move in fellowship without end. --
Francesco Ceni willed that, after death,
His tombstone thus should speak for him. And surely
Small cause there is for that fond wish of ours
Long to continue in this world; a world
That keeps not faith, nor yet can point a hope
To good, whereof itself is destitute.

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