by Dante Gabriel Rossetti (1828 - 1882)
Your hands lie open in the long fresh...
Language: English
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]1 that scatter and amass. All round our nest, far as the eye can pass, Are golden kingcup fields with silver edge Where the cow-parsley skirts the hawthorn hedge. 'Tis visible silence, still as the hour glass. Deep in the sunsearched 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.
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Text Authorship:
- by Dante Gabriel Rossetti (1828 - 1882), "Silent noon", appears in Ballads and Sonnets, first published 1881 [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 George Frederick Boyle (1886 - 1948), "Your hands lie open", published 1939 [ voice and piano ] [sung text not yet checked]
- by Henry Clough-Leighter (1874 - 1956), "Silent noon", published 1910 [ high voice, piano, and string quartet ], from The Day of Beauty [sung text not yet checked]
- by Edward Toner Cone (b. 1917), "Silent noon", published 1964 [ soprano and piano ], in the collection New Vistas of Song [sung text not yet checked]
- by Frederick Shepherd Converse (1871 - 1940), "Silent noon", published <<1940 [ voice and piano ] [sung text not yet checked]
- by John Henry Diercks (b. 1927), "Pastorale", 1957 [ SSA chorus and piano ] [sung text not yet checked]
- by Ernest Bristow Farrar (1885 - 1918), "Silent noon", op. 10 no. 2, published 1911 [ voice and piano ], from Vagabond Songs, no. 2 [sung text not yet checked]
- by Miriam Gideon (1906 - 1996), "Silent noon", 1983 [ medium voice and piano (or flute, oboe, vibraphone, violin, and violoncello) ], from Wing'd Hour, no. 2, New York, Peters [sung text not yet checked]
- by Robert William Manton (1894 - 1967), "The wing'd hour", 1954 [ medium voice and piano ] [sung text not yet checked]
- by Charles Wilfred Orr (1893 - 1976), "Silent noon", 1921, published 1922 [ baritone and piano ] [sung text not yet checked]
- by Masters van Someren-Godfery (d. 1947), "Silent noon", published 1925 [ voice and piano ] [sung text not yet checked]
- by Ralph Vaughan Williams (1872 - 1958), "Silent noon", 1903, published 1904 [ voice and piano ], from The House of Life, no. 2 [sung text checked 1 time]
- by Elinor Remick Warren (1900 - 1991), "Silent noon", published 1928 [ voice and piano ] [sung text not yet checked]
Available translations, adaptations or excerpts, and transliterations (if applicable):
- CAT Catalan (Català) (Sílvia Pujalte Piñán) , "Migdia silenciós", copyright © 2013, (re)printed on this website with kind permission
- FRE French (Français) (Tim Palmer) , copyright © 2017, (re)printed on this website with kind permission
- GER German (Deutsch) (Richard Flatter) , "Schweigender Mittag", appears in Die Fähre, Englische Lyrik aus fünf Jahrhunderten, first published 1936
- GER German (Deutsch) (Sylvia Bendel Larcher) , copyright © 2021, (re)printed on this website with kind permission
- POL Polish (Polski) (Jan Kasprowicz) , "Cisza południa", Warsaw, Księgarnia H. Antenberga, first published 1907
- SPA Spanish (Español) (Mercedes Vivas) , copyright © 2011, (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: 14
Word count: 111