Will Ogdon: Three Baritone Songs (The Lied and Art Song Texts Page: Texts and Translations to Lieder, mélodies, canzoni, and other classical vocal music)


Art thou pale for weariness
Of climbing heaven and gazing on the earth,
Wandering companionless
Among the stars that have a different birth, --
And ever changing, like a joyless eye 
That finds no object worth its constancy?

[ ... ]

2. Slow, slow fresh fount

Language: English

Authorship

Ben Jonson (1572-1637)

Cynthia's Revels

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 Slow, slow, fresh fount, keep time with my salt tears:
    [Yet slower, yet; O faintly,]¹ gentle springs:
 List to the heavy part the music bears,
    Woe weeps out her [division]² when she sings.
     Droop herbs and flowers,
     Fall grief in showers,
     Our [beauties are]³ not ours;
      [O, I could still,]⁴
 Like melting snow upon some craggy hill,
     [Drop, drop, drop, drop,]⁵
    Since [nature's]⁶ pride is, now, a withered daffodil.

View text without footnotes
¹ Horsley: "O slower yet, O fainter"
² Horsley: "division"
³ Horsley: "beauty is"
⁴ Quilter: "Or I could still"; Horsley: "O could I still"
⁵ Horsley: "Fall down, fall down."
⁶ Horsley: "summer's"

Input by Ted Perry

3. O let me climb

Language: English

Authorship

Henry Vaughan (1622-1695)


O let me climb
When I lie down.
The pious souls by night
Is like a clouded star
Whose beams tho said
To shed their light
Under some dark cloud
Yet are above
And shine and move
Beyond that misty shroud.
So in my bed
That curtained grave, though
Sleep like ashes hides by lamp,
And life I will Thee abide.