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In sickness and health

Language: English

When you in sickness lie,
No more the field is green, nor blue the sky ;
No more invisible and lovely things
The forest haunt with songs and rustling wings ;
Back from my stricken sense the world recedes,
And beauty's garden is a patch of weeds.

Then can I [catch]1 in music's blithest tone
Nought but the closing cadence of a moan;
Then can I joy no more in sound unheard
Save in the silence of the written word;
The melodies that once could charm my ear
Forbode some final dissonance of fear.

Earth has no health, when health from you is fled;
No angel stands between the quick and death;
The awful unity of life and death
Is sacramental in your labouring breath;
And as I watch you I can hear Him call
Who is the king of Nothing or of All.

But ah! your nature surely cannot owe
To that grim tyrant such an overthrow;
You seem a creature of an alien strain
From force and fate, and unallied to pain;
Could you but meet their Master, little while
Would lapse ere you had won him to a smile.


View text without footnotes
1 Albéniz: "hear"

Input by Alfredo García

Authorship

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

Available translations (or transliterations, if applicable):

Date added to the website: 2008-12-06.

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