Silent Noon (Ralph Vaughan Williams)

From ChoralWiki
Jump to navigation Jump to search
The printable version is no longer supported and may have rendering errors. Please update your browser bookmarks and please use the default browser print function instead.

Music files

L E G E N D Disclaimer How to download
ICON SOURCE
Network.png Web Page
File details.gif File details
Question.gif Help
  • (Posted 2018-12-29)  CPDL #52733:  Network.png
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: SecularLied

Language: English
Instruments: Piano

First published: 1903
Description: 

External websites:

Original text and translations

English.png 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.