Petit the Poet (Masters, set by G. Negri) (The Lied and Art Song Texts Page: Texts and Translations to Lieder, mélodies, canzoni, and other classical vocal music)


Seeds in a dry pod, tick, tick, tick,
Tick, tick, tick, like mites in a quarrel -- 
Faint iambics that the full breeze wakens -- 
But the pine tree makes a symphony thereof.
Triolets, villanelles, rondels, rondeaus,
Ballades by the score with the same old thought:
The snows and the roses of yesterday are vanished;
And what is love but a rose that fades?
Life all around me here in the village:
Tragedy, comedy, valor and truth,
Courage, constancy, heroism, failure -- 
All in the loom, and oh what patterns!
Woodlands, meadows, streams and rivers -- 
Blind to all of it all my life long.
Triolets, villanelles, rondels, rondeaus,
Seeds in a dry pod, tick, tick, tick,
Tick, tick, tick, what little iambics,
While Homer and Whitman roared in the pines?

Authorship

Edgar Lee Masters (1868-1950)

Spoon River Anthology

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

Gino Negri (1919-)

Antologia di Spoon River

Date added to the website: 2008-09-26.

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