SONGS OF LOSS

Five songs to poems by Sir Edward Dyer, James Joyce, W.B. Yeats, James Elroy Flecker and William Blake

(2026)

For medium voice and piano

12'

A Modest Love (Sir Edward Dyer 1543-1607)

2. A Flower Given to my Daughter (James Joyce 1882-1941)

3. He Hears the Cry of the Sedge (W.B. Yeats 1865-1939)

4. Tenebris Interlucentem (James Elroy Flecker 1884-1915)

5. Eternity (William Blake 1757-1827)

1. SIR EDWARD DYER (1543-1607)

A Modest Love

The lowest trees have tops, the ant her gall,

The fly her spleen, the little spark his heat;

The slender hairs cast shadows, though but small,

And bees have stings, although they be not great;

Seas have their source, and so have shallow springs:

And love is love, in beggars and in kings.

Where waters smoothest run, there deepest are the fords;

The dial stirs, yet none perceives it move;

The firmest faith is found in fewest words;

The turtles do not sing, and yet they love;

True hearts have ears and eyes, no tongues to speak:

They hear and see, and sigh, and then they break

2. JAMES JOYCE (1882-1941)

A Flower Given To My Daughter

Frail the white rose and frail are

Her hands that gave

Whose soul is sere and paler

Than time’s wan wave

Rosefrail and fair - yet frailest

A wonder wild

In gentle eyes thou veilest,

My blueveined child.

3. W.B.YEATS (1865-1939)

I wander by the edge

Of this desolate lake

Where wind cries in the sedge:

Until the axle break

That keeps the stars in their round,

And hands hurl in the deep

The banners of East and West,

And the girdle of light is unbound,

Your breast will not lie by the breast

Of your beloved in sleep.

4. JAMES ELROY FLECKER (1884-1915)

Tenebris Interlucentem

A linnet who had lost her way
Sang on a blackened bough in Hell,
Till all the ghosts remembered well
The trees, the wind, the golden day.

At last they knew that they had died
When they heard music in that land,
And someone there stole forth a hand
To draw a brother to his side.

5. WILLIAM BLAKE (1757-1827)

Eternity

He who binds to himself a joy

Does the winged life destroy:

But he who kisses the joy as it flies

Lives in eternity’s sun rise