Silent Noon (Ralph Vaughan Williams)

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(Posted 2018-12-29) CPDL #52733:

Contributor: Paolo Pandolfo (submitted 2018-12-29). Score information: A4, 5 pages, 1.27 MB Copyright: CPDL

Edition notes: IMSLP scan of 1903 print

General Information

Title: Silent Noon (No. 2 from The House of Life)
Composer: Ralph Vaughan Williams
Lyricist: Dante Gabriel Rossetti

Number of voices: 1v Voicing: Solo medium
Genre: Secular, Lied

Language: English
Instruments: Piano

First published: 1903
Description:

External websites:

The House of Life at the Petrucci Music Library (IMSLP)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4AryK1g6Q84

Original text and translations

English text

Your hands lie open in the long fresh grass,
The finger-points look through like rosy blooms:
Your eyes smile peace. The pasture gleams and glooms
'Neath billowing clouds that scatter and amass.

All round our nest, far as the eye can pass,
Are golden king-cup fields with silver edge
Where the cow-parsley skirts the hawthorn hedge.
'Tis visible silence, still as the hour glass.

Deep in the sun-searched growths the dragon-fly
Hangs like a blue thread loosened from the sky:
So this winged hour is dropt to us from above.
Oh! clasp we to our hearts, for deathless dower,
This close-companioned inarticulate hour
When twofold silence was the song of love.