Perhaps his peace I could destroy,
And spoil the blisses that await him;
Yet let my rival smile in joy,
For thy dear sake I cannot hate him.
Ah! since thy angel form is gone,
My heart no more can rest with any;
But what it sought in thee alone,
Attempts, alas! to find in many.
Then fare thee well, deceitful maid!
’Twere vain and fruitless to regret thee;
Nor hope nor memory yield their aid,
But pride may teach me to forget thee.
[Yet all this giddy waste of years,
This tiresome round of palling pleasures;
These varied loves, these matrons’ fears,
These thoughtless strains to passion’s measures –
If thou wert mine, had all been hush’d: –
This cheek, now pale from early riot,
With passion’s hectic ne’er had flushed,
But bloom’d in calm domestic quiet.
Yes, once the rural scene was sweet,
For nature seem’d to smile before thee;
And once my breast abhorr’d deceit, –
For then it beat but to adore thee.
But now I seek for other joys:
To think would drive my soul to madness;
In thoughtless throngs and empty noise
I conquer half my bosom’s sadness.
Yet, even in these a thought will steal
In spite of every vain endeavour, –
And, fiends might pity what I feel, –
To know that thou art lost for ever.]
On parting
[The kiss, dear maid!] (1816)1
I
The kiss, dear maid! thy lip has left
Shall never part from mine,
Till happier hours restore the gift
Untainted back to thine.
II
Thy parting glance, which fondly beams,
An equal love may see:
The tear that from thine eyelid streams
Can weep no change in me.
III
I ask no pledge to make me blest
In gazing when alone;
Nor one memorial for a breast,
Whose thoughts are all thine own.
IV
Nor need I write – to tell the tale
My pen were doubly weak:
Oh! what can idle words avail,
Unless the heart could speak?
V
By day or night, in weal or woe,
That heart, no longer free,
Must bear the love it cannot show,
And silent ache for thee.
(Bishop, Nathan)
HUGO WOLF
Sun of the sleepless!
[translated as ‘Sonne der Schlummerlosen’ by Otto Gildemeister] (1896)1
Sun of the sleepless! melancholy star!
Whose tearful beam glows tremulously far,
That show’st the darkness thou canst not dispel,
How like art thou to joy remembered well!
So gleams the past, the light of other days,
Which shines, but warms not with its powerless rays;
A night-beam Sorrow watcheth to behold,
Distinct, but distant – clear – but, oh how cold!
(Karg-Elert, Loewe, Mendelssohn, Nathan, Nietzsche, Rimsky-Korsakov, Rorem, Schumann)
HENRY BISHOP
To Thomas Moore (1818)1
I
My boat is on the shore,
And my bark is on the sea;
But, before I go, Tom Moore,
Here’s a double health to thee!
II
Here’s a sigh to those who love me,
And a smile to those who hate;
And, whatever sky’s above me,
Here’s a heart for every fate.
III
Though the ocean roar around me,
Yet it still shall bear me on;
Though a desert should surround me,
It hath springs that may be won.
IV
Were’t the last drop in the well,
As I gasp’d upon the brink,
Ere my fainting spirit fell,
’Tis to thee that I would drink.
V
With that water, as this wine,
The libation I would pour
Would be – peace with thine and mine,
And a health to thee, Tom Moore.
(Gideon)
ROBERT SCHUMANN: from Sechs frühe Lieder
I saw thee weep
[translated as ‘Die Weinende’ by Julius Körner] (1827/1933)1
I
I saw thee weep – the big bright tear
Came o’er that eye of blue2;
And then methought it did appear
A violet dropping dew;
I saw thee smile – the sapphire’s blaze
Beside thee ceased to shine;
It could not match the living rays
That fill’d that glance of thine.
II
[As clouds from yonder sun receive
A deep and mellow dye,
Which scarce the shade of coming eve
Can banish from the sky,
Those smiles unto the moodiest mind
Their own pure joy impart;
Their sunshine leaves a glow behind
That lightens o’er the heart.]
(Busoni, Hummel, Loewe, Nathan)
ROBERT SCHUMANN: from Myrthen, Op. 25 (1840/1840)
My soul is dark1
[translated as ‘Aus den “Hebräischen Gesängen” ’ by Julius Körner]
I
My soul is dark – Oh! quickly string
The harp I yet can brook to hear;
And let thy gentle fingers fling
Its melting murmurs o’er mine ear.
If in this heart a hope be dear,
That sound shall charm it forth again:
If in these eyes there lurk a tear,
’Twill flow, and cease to burn my brain.
II
But bid the strain be wild and deep,
Nor let thy notes of joy be first:
I tell thee, minstrel, I must weep,
Or else this heavy heart will burst;
For it hath been by sorrow nursed,
And ached in sleepless silence long;
And now ’tis doom’d to know the worst,
And break at once – or yield to song.2
(Balakirev, Loewe, Nathan, Nielsen, Rubinstein)
CHARLES GOUNOD
Maid of Athens (1872/1872)1
Maid of Athens, ere we part,
Give, oh give me back my heart!
Or, since that has left my breast,
Keep it now, and take the rest!
Hear my vow before I go,
.2
By those tresses unconfined,
Woo’d by each Ægean wind;
By those lids whose jetty fringe
Kiss thy soft cheeks’ blooming tinge;
By those wild eyes like the roe,
.
By that lip I long to taste;
By that zone-encircled waist;
By all the token-flowers that tell3
What words can never speak so well;
By love’s alternate joy and woe,
.
Maid of Athens! I am gone:
Think of me, sweet! when alone.
Though I fly to Istambol,
Athens holds my heart and soul:
Can I cease to love thee? No!
.
(Balfe, Lassen, Nathan)
MAUDE VALÉRIE WHITE
So, we’ll go no more a roving (1888)1
So, we’ll go no more a roving
So late into the night,
Though the heart be still as loving,
And the moon be still as bright.
For the sword outwears its sheath,
And the soul wear
s out the breast,
And the heart must pause to breathe,
And love itself have rest.
Though the night was made for loving,
And the day returns too soon,
Yet we’ll go no more a roving
By the light of the moon.
(van Dieren, Holloway, Maconchy)
HUBERT PARRY: from English Lyrics IV (1896)
Stanzas for music [There be none of Beauty’s daughters]1
There be none of Beauty’s daughters
With a magic like thee;
And like music on the waters
Is thy sweet voice to me:
When, as if its sound were causing
The charmed ocean’s pausing,
The waves lie still and gleaming
And the lull’d winds seem dreaming.
And the midnight moon is weaving
Her bright chain o’er the deep;
Whose breast is gently heaving,
As an infant’s asleep:
So the spirit bows before thee,
To listen and adore thee;
With a full but soft emotion,
Like the swell of Summer’s ocean.
(Castelnuovo-Tedesco, Foulds, Gibbs, Holbrooke, Holloway, MacCunn, Mendelssohn, Quilter, Stanford, White, Wolf)
When we two parted
When we two parted
In silence and tears,
Half broken-hearted
To sever for years,
Pale grew thy cheek and cold,
Colder thy kiss;
Truly that hour foretold
Sorrow to this.
The dew of the morning
Sunk chill on my brow –
It felt like the warning
Of what I feel now.
Thy vows are all broken,
And light is thy fame:
I hear thy name spoken,
And share in its shame.1
They name thee before me,
A knell to mine ear;
A shudder comes o’er me –
Why wert thou so dear?
They know not I knew thee,
Who knew thee too well: –
Long, long shall I rue thee,
Too deeply to tell.
[Then fare thee well, Fanny,
Now doubly undone,
To prove false unto many
As fathomless to one.
Thou art past all recalling
Even would I recall,
For the woman once falling
Forever must fall.]2
In secret we met –
In silence I grieve,
That thy heart could forget,
Thy spirit deceive.
If I should meet thee
After long years,
How should I greet thee?
With silence and tears.
(Castelnuovo-Tedesco, Nathan)
ARNOLD SCHOENBERG: Ode to Napoleon Buonaparte, for reciter, piano and string quartet, Op. 41a (1942/1944); later arranged for string orchestra, Op. 41b
To-day I have boxed one hour – written an ode to Napoleon Buonaparte – copied it – eaten six biscuits – drunk four bottles of soda water – redde away the rest of my time – besides giving poor *** a world of advice about this mistress of his. (Journal, 10 April 1814.)
The day before, Byron had confided to his Journal the disappointment and outrage he felt at Napoleon’s defeat:
Napoleon Buonaparte has abdicated the throne of the world. ‘Excellent well.’ Methinks Sylla did better; for he revenged and resigned in the height of his sway, red with the slaughter of his foes – the finest instance of glorious contempt of the rascals upon record. Dioclesian did well too – Amurath not amis, had he become aught except a dervise – Charles the Fifth but so so – but Napoleon, worst of all. What! wait till they were in his capital, and then talk of his readiness to give up what is already gone!! […] ’Sdeath! – Dionysius at Corinth was yet a king to this. The ‘Isle of Elba’ to retire to! – Well – if it had been Caprea, I should have marvelled less. ‘I see men’s minds are but a parcel of their fortunes.’ [Antony and Cleopatra, Act III, sc. xiii.] I am utterly bewildered and confounded.
Fiona MacCarthy explains in her Introduction to Byron: Life and Legend (John Murray, 2002) Byron’s fascination with Napoleon: ‘The long shadow of Napoleon loomed over Byron’s life, an inspiration and an irritant. Byron, born in 1788, the year before the outbreak of the French Revolution, was conscious of living at an unprecedented period: as he put it, “we live in gigantic and exaggerated times, which make all under Gog and Magog appear pigmean.” [letter to Sir Walter Scott, 4 May 1822] The apparition of Napoleon, almost twenty years his senior, was the spur to Byron’s own ambition, his dissidence, the glamour of his arrogance, the sense of sweeping history that permeates his writing. Napoleon’s flamboyance, his stamina, his dress, his stance, the assiduity with which he preened his image, nurtured Byron’s own creative strain of mockery. As he told his friend Lady Blessington, “with me there is, as Napoleon said, but one step between the sublime and the ridiculous.” ’
Schoenberg, who had emigrated to America in 1933, composed his ‘Ode to Napoleon Bonaparte’ between March and June 1942. Hitler was still in power in Nazi Germany, and Schoenberg almost certainly saw in Byron’s poem an opportunity to express his own hatred of totalitarian dictatorships. By retaining the last stanza, which Byron cut in his final version, Schoenberg was also expressing his gratitude to his adopted country, where he had been living for eight years. The E-flat triads of the ‘Ode’ allude ironically to Beethoven’s E-flat major Third Symphony, the ‘Eroica’ – an appellation that Beethoven withdrew on hearing that Napoleon had assumed the title of Emperor.
I
’Tis done – but yesterday a King!
And arm’d with Kings to strive –
And now thou art a nameless thing:
So abject – yet alive!
Is this the man of thousand thrones,
Who strew’d our earth with hostile bones,
And can he thus survive?
Since he, miscall’d the Morning Star,
Nor man nor fiend hath fallen so far.
II
Ill-minded man! why scourge thy kind
Who bow’d so low the knee?
By gazing on thyself grown blind,
Thou taught’st the rest to see.
With might unquestion’d, – power to save, –
Thine only gift hath been the grave
To those that worshipp’d thee;
Nor till thy fall could mortals guess
Ambition’s less than littleness!
III
Thanks for that lesson – It will teach
To after-warriors more
Than high Philosophy can preach,
And vainly preach’d before.
That spell upon the minds of men
Breaks never to unite again,
That led them to adore
Those Pagod1 things of sabre sway
With fronts of brass, and feet of clay.
IV
The triumph and the vanity,
The rapture of the strife –
The earthquake voice of Victory,
To thee the breath of life;
The sword, the sceptre, and that sway
Which man seem’d made but to obey,
Wherewith renown was rife –
All quell’d! – Dark Spirit! what must be
The madness of thy memory!
V
The Desolator desolate!
The Victor overthrown!
The Arbiter of others’ fate
A Suppliant for his own!
Is it some yet imperial hope
That with such change can calmly cope?
Or dread of death alone?
To die a prince – or live a slave –
Thy choice is most ignobly brave!
VI
He who of old would rend the oak,2
Dream’d not of
the rebound:
Chain’d by the trunk he vainly broke –
Alone – how look’d he round?
Thou, in the sternness of thy strength,
An equal deed hast done at length,
And darker fate hast found:
He fell, the forest prowler’s prey;
But thou must eat thy heart away!
VII
The Roman3, when his burning heart
Was slaked with blood of Rome
Threw down the dagger – dared depart,
In savage grandeur, home –
He dared depart in utter scorn
Of men that such a yoke had borne,
Yet left him such a doom!
His only glory was that hour
Of self-upheld abandon’d power.
VIII
The Spaniard4, when the lust of sway
Had lost its quickening spell,
Cast crowns for rosaries away,
An empire for a cell;
A strict accountant of his beads,
A subtle disputant on creeds,
His dotage trifled well:
Yet better had he neither known
A bigot’s shrine, nor despot’s throne.
IX
But thou – from thy reluctant hand
The thunderbolt is wrung –
Too late thou leav’st the high command
To which thy weakness clung;
All Evil Spirit as thou art,
It is enough to grieve the heart
To see thine own unstrung;
To think that God’s fair world hath been
The Penguin Book of English Song Page 31