A widow bird sate mourning for her love Upon a wintry bough, The frozen wind crept on above; The freezing stream below. There was no leaf upon the forest bare, No [flower]1 upon the ground And little motion in the air, Except the mill-wheel's sound.
Six "Songs" for Singing
 [incomplete]Song Cycle by Carol Barratt
1. Song  [sung text checked 1 time]
Authorship:
- by Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792 - 1822), no title, appears in Charles the First
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Available translations, adaptations or excerpts, and transliterations (if applicable):
- CZE Czech (Čeština) (Jaroslav Vrchlický) , "Píseň"
- ITA Italian (Italiano) (Ferdinando Albeggiani) , "Un passero solitario il suo amore lamenta", copyright © 2009, (re)printed on this website with kind permission
Some settings use the modernized spelling "sat" instead of "sate"
1 Treharne: "flowers".
Researcher for this text: Emily Ezust [Administrator]
2. Summer Song  [sung text checked 1 time]
When as the rye [reach'd]1 to the chin, And chop-cherry, chop-cherry ripe within, Strawberries swimming in the cream, And schoolboys playing in the stream; Then, O, then O then O, my true love said, [Till that time]2 come again She could not live a maid!
Authorship:
- by George Peele (1556? - 1596), "The Impatient Maid", appears in The Old Wives' Tale, first published 1595
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Available translations, adaptations or excerpts, and transliterations (if applicable):
- DUT Dutch (Nederlands) (Lidy van Noordenburg) , copyright © 2023, (re)printed on this website with kind permission
Confirmed with The Book of Elizabethan Verse, ed. by William Stanley Braithwaite, 1907.
1 Barratt, Raynor, Rutter, Warlock: "reach"2 Rutter: "Until that should"
3 Rutter adds:
Cuckoo, cuckoo, cuckoo: o word of fear, Unpleasing to a married ear! Cuckoo, loud sing cuckoo!
Researcher for this text: Emily Ezust [Administrator]
3. Song  [sung text checked 1 time]
Pious [Celinda]1 goes to prayers If I but ask [the]2 favour, And yet the tender fool's in tears When she believes I'll leave her. Would I were free from this restraint, Or else had [hopes]3 to win her; Would she could make of me a saint, Or I of her a sinner!
Authorship:
- by William Congreve (1670 - 1729)
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Available translations, adaptations or excerpts, and transliterations (if applicable):
- GER German (Deutsch) (Walter A. Aue) , "Selinda fängt zu beten an", copyright © 2010, (re)printed on this website with kind permission
1 Barratt: "Selinda"
2 Barratt: "a"
3 Barratt: "hope"
Researcher for this text: Emily Ezust [Administrator]
4. The Bachelor's Song  [sung text checked 1 time]
How happy a thing were a wedding And a bedding, If a man might purchase a wife For a twelve month and a day; But to live with her all a man's life, For ever and for ay, Till she grow as grey as a cat, Good faith, Mr. Parson, I thank you for that.
Authorship:
- by Thomas Flatman (1637 - 1688)
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Researcher for this text: Emily Ezust [Administrator]5. Song  [sung text checked 1 time]
Time stands still with gazing on her face,
Stand still and gaze, for minutes, hours and years to her give place.
All other things shall change but she remains the same,
Till heavens changed have their course and Time hath lost his name.
Cupid doth hover up and down, blinded with her fair eyes,
And Fortune captive at her feet contemned and conquered lies.
[ ... ]
Authorship:
- by Anonymous / Unidentified Author
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Researcher for this text: Emily Ezust [Administrator]