Midsummer dreams (Fletcher, set by M. Bauer) (The Lied and Art Song Texts Page: Texts and Translations to Lieder, mélodies, canzoni, and other classical vocal music)


I 

There is a tall white weed growing at the top of this sand hill: 
In the grass
It is very still. 
It lifts its heavy bracts of flattened bloom 
Against the sky 
Hazily grey with brume. 
Out over yonder boats pass 
And the swallows 
Flatten themselves on the grass. 
The lake is silvering beneath the heat. 
The wind's feet 
Touch lazily each crest, 
Like white gulls slow flapping 
To windward. 
One rose white cloud slowly disengages, loosening itself, 
And stands 
Above the larkspur-coloured water : 
Like Dione's daughter 
Braiding up her wet hair with her pale hands. 

II 

The moon puts out her face at a rift between the trees, 
Which do not lift one drooping leaf, this night of June. 
There is no lazy breeze to set them clashing adrift. 
Thin gleams of silver rise and break in the air,
Fireflies here and there. 
Forest of blue masses suddenly quivering with rapid points of white, 
Are the forests beneath the sea where no breeze passes 
As still as you to-night?
The moon puts out her face at a rift between the trees;
Through my window, the bed cut evenly with diagonal shafts of light, 
Is a boat rocking out adrift.
Under it bend the silver tips of the dark blue coral trees, 
And fireflies like glass fish 
Drift and ripple upwards in the breeze.

Authorship

John Gould Fletcher (1886-1950)

Goblins and Pagodas

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

Marion Eugénie Bauer (1882-1955)

Four poems

Date added to the website: 2008-09-24.

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