Five Songs

for mezzo-soprano and piano

 

1. Youth Calls to Age
Dylan Thomas [1914-1953]

You too have seen the sun a bird of fire
Stepping on clouds across the golden sky,
Have known man's envy and his weak disire,
Have loved and lost.
You, who are old, have loved and lost as I
All that is beautiful but born to die,
Have traced your patterns in the hastenng frost.
And you have walked upin the hills at night,
And bared your head veneath the living sky,
When it was noon have walked into the light,
Knowing such joy as I.
Though there are years between us, the are naught
Youth calls to age across the tired years:
'What have you found,' he cries, 'what have you sought?'
'What you have found,' age answers through his tears,
'What you have sought'

 

2. Lines
Joseph Rodman Drake [1795-1820]

DAY gradual fades, in evening gray,
Its last faint beam hath fled,
And sinks the sun's declining ray
In ocean's wavy bed.
So o'er the loves and joys of youth
Thy waves, Indifference, roll;
So mantles round our days of truth
That death-pool of the soul.

Spreads o'er the heavens the shadowy night
Her dim and shapeless form,
So human pleasures, frail and light,
Are lost in passion's storm.
So fades the sunshine of the breast,
So passion's dreamings fall,
So friendship's fervours sink to rest,
Oblivion shrouds them all.

 

3. The Eagle and the Mole
Elinor Wylie [1885-1928]

AVOID the reeking herd,
Shun the polluted flock,
Live like that stoic bird,
The eagle of the rock.

The huddled warmth of crowds
Begets and fosters hate;
He keeps above the clouds
His cliff inviolate.

When flocks are folded warm,
And herds to shelter run,
He sails above the storm,
He stares into the sun.

If in the eagle's track
Your sinews cannot leap,
Avoid the lathered pack,
Turn from the steaming sheep.

If you would keep your soul
From spotted sight or sound,
Live like the velvet mole:
Go burrow underground.

And there hold intercourse
With roots of trees and stones,
With rivers at their source,
And disembodied bones.

 

4. The Red Wheelbarrow
William Carlos Williams [1883-1963]

so much depends
upon

a red wheel
barrow

glazed with rain
water

beside the white
chickens.

 

5. A Slumber Did My Spirit Steal
William Wordsworth [1770-1850]

A slumber did my spirit seal;
  I had no human fears:
She seemed a thing that could not feel
  The touch of earthly years.
No motion has she now, no force;
  She neither hears nor sees;
Rolled round in earth's diurnal course,
  With rocks, and stones, and trees.