From Cocoon forth (Dickinson, set by S. Glickman) (The Lied and Art Song Texts Page: Texts and Translations to Lieder, mélodies, canzoni, and other classical vocal music)


From Cocoon forth a Butterfly
As Lady from her Door
Emerged - a Summer Afternoon - 
Repairing Everywhere -

Without Design - that I could trace
Except to stray abroad
On Miscellaneous Enterprise
The Clovers - understood -

Her pretty Parasol was seen
Contracting in a Field
Where Men made Hay -
Then struggling hard
With an opposing Cloud -

Where Parties - Phantom as Herself -
To Nowhere - seemed to go
In purposeless Circumference,
As 'twere a Tropic Show.

And notwithstanding Bee - that worked -
And Flower - that zealous blew,
This Audience of idleness
Disdained them, from the Sky -

Till Sundown crept - a steady Tide -
And Men that made the Hay -
And Afternoon - and Butterfly -
Extinguished - in [its]¹ Sea.

View text without footnotes
¹ Glickman: "the"

Authorship

Emily Dickinson (1830-1886)

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

Sylvia Glickman (1932-2006)

Added to the website between May 1995 and September 2003.

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