To a Child dancing in the Wind

I

Dance there upon the shore;
What need have you to care
For wind or water's roar?
And tumble out your hair
That the salt drops have wet;
Being young you have not known
The fool's triumph, nor yet
Love lost as soon as won,
Nor the best labourer dead
And all the sheaves to bind.
What need have you to dread
The monstrous crying of wind?
  
II

Has no one said those daring
Kind eyes should be more learn'd?
Or warned you how despairing
The moths are when they are burned,
I could have warned you, but you are young,
So we speak a different tongue.
  
O you will take whatever's offered
And dream that all the world's a friend,
Suffer as your mother suffered,
Be as broken in the end.
But I am old and you are young,
And I speak a barbarous tongue.

by William Butler Yeats (1865-1939) , "To a Child dancing in the Wind"

Musical settings (art songs, Lieder, mélodies, (etc.), choral pieces, and other vocal works set to this text), listed by composer (not necessarily exhaustive)

by Michael Murray , "To a Child dancing in the Wind", 2004 [soprano, horn, and piano], from The Wild Winds Weep, no. 1.
by Daniel Ruyneman (1886-1963) , "To a Child dancing in the Wind", 1949.
by Hugh Wood (1932-) , "To a Child dancing in the Wind", published 1974. [SATB chorus a cappella]

Date added to the website: 2008-09-18.

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