Ezra Laderman: Magic Prison (The Lied and Art Song Texts Page: Texts and Translations to Lieder, mélodies, canzoni, and other classical vocal music)


If you were coming in the Fall,
I'd brush the summer by
With half a smile and half a spurn,
As housewives do a fly.

If I could see you in a year,
I'd wind the months in balls,
And put them each in separate drawers,
Until their time befalls.

If only centuries delayed,
I'd count them on my hand,
Subtracting till my fingers dropped
Into Van Diemen's land.

If certain, when this life was out,
That yours and mine should be,
I'd toss it yonder like a rind,
And taste eternity.

But now, all ignorant of the length
Of time's uncertain wing,
It goads me, like the goblin bee,
That will not state its sting.

?.

Language: English

Authorship

Emily Dickinson (1830-1886)

Poems by Emily Dickinson

See other settings of this text

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"

?.

Language: English

Authorship

Emily Dickinson (1830-1886)

Poems by Emily Dickinson

See other settings of this text

Available translations (or transliterations, if applicable):

GER

German


My life closed twice before its close;
It yet remains to see
If Immortality unveil
A third event to me,

So huge, so hopeless to conceive,
As these that twice befell.
Parting is all we know of heaven,
And all we need of hell.

?.

Language: English

Authorship

Emily Dickinson (1830-1886)

Poems by Emily Dickinson


At least to pray is left, is left.
O Jesus! in the air
I know not which thy chamber is, -
I'm knocking everywhere.

Thou stirrest earthquake in the South,
And maelstrom in the sea;
Say, Jesus Christ of Nazareth,
Hast thou no arm for me?

?.

Language: English

Authorship

Emily Dickinson (1830-1886)

Poems of Emily Dickinson


I'm wife; I've finished that,
That other state;
I'm Czar, I'm woman now:
It's safer so.

How odd the girl's life looks
Behind this soft eclipse!
I think that earth seems so
To those in heaven now.

This being comfort, then
That other kind was pain;
But why compare?
I'm wife! stop there!