My love dwelt in a northern land
[A tower dim]1 in a forest green 
Was his, and far away the sand,
And gray wash of the waves [was]2 seen,
The woven forest boughs between.

And through the northern summer night 
The sunset slowly died away,
And herds of strange deer, silver white,
Came gleaming through the forest gray,
And fled like ghosts before the day.

And oft, that month, we watch'd the moon
Wax great and white o'er wood and lawn, 
And wane, with waning of the June,
Till, like a brand for battle drawn,
She fell, and flamed in a wild dawn.

I know not if the forest green
Still girdles round that castle gray,
I know not if, the boughs between,
The white deer vanish ere the day.
The grass above my love is green,
[My]4 heart is colder than the clay.

H. Pasmore sets stanzas 1-2, 4

About the headline (FAQ)

View original text (without footnotes)
¹ Elgar: "A dim tower"
² Elgar: "were"
⁴ Elgar, Pasmore: "His"

Text Authorship:

• by Andrew Lang (1844 - 1912), note: in Lang's version, the beloved is female. [author's text checked 1 time against a primary source]

Musical settings (art songs, Lieder, mélodies, (etc.), choral pieces, and other vocal works set to this text), listed by composer (not necessarily exhaustive):

• by Edward Elgar, Sir (1857 - 1934), "My love dwelt in a Northern land", 1889, published 1890 [ satb chorus ] [sung text checked 1 time]
• by Henry Bickford Pasmore (1857 - 1944), "A northern romance", stanzas 1-2,4 [sung text checked 1 time]
• by John Theodore Livingston Raynor (1909 - 1970), "My Love Dwelt In A Northern Land", op. 466 (1956) [sung text not yet checked]

Available translations, adaptations or excerpts, and transliterations (if applicable):

• DUT Dutch (Nederlands) (Lidy van Noordenburg) , "Mijn liefste woonde in het noorden", copyright © 2008, (re)printed on this website with kind permission

Researcher for this text: Emily Ezust [Administrator]

This text was added to the website between May 1995 and September 2003.
Line count: 21
Word count: 144