High Voice and Piano

1. Sweet Love Away [James Joyce]
2. Vertue [George Herbert]
3. Vesper [Henry David Thoreau]

Published by Plangere Editions [purchase]

Purchase from Theadore Front medium voice or low voice

Dropbox for audio recordings (reference only)

Vertue and Vesper audio:

Texts:

In the dark pine-wood 
I would we lay, 
In deep cool shadow 
At noon of day. 

How sweet to lie there, 
Sweet to kiss, 
Where the great pine-forest 
Enaisled is! 

Thy kiss descending 
Sweeter were 
With a soft tumult 
Of thy hair. 

O unto the pine-wood 
At noon of day 
Come with me now, 
Sweet love, away.

There is a vale which none hath seen, 
Where foot of man has never been, 
Such as here lives with toil and strife, 
An anxious and a sinful life. 
There every virtue has its birth, 
Ere it descends upon the earth, 
And thither every deed returns, 
Which in the generous bosom burns. 

There love is warm, and youth is young, 
And poetry is yet unsung. 
For Virtue still adventures there, 
And freely breathes her native air. 

And ever, if you hearken well, 
You still may hear its vesper bell, 
And tread of high-souled men go by, 
Their thoughts conversing with the sky.

Sweet day, so cool, so calm, so bright,
The bridall of the earth and skie:
The dew shall weep thy fall to night;
                                    For thou must die.

Sweet rose, whose hue angrie and brave
Bids the rash gazer wipe his eye:
Thy root is ever in its grave
                                    And thou must die.

Sweet spring, full of sweet dayes and roses,
A box where sweets compacted lie;
My musick shows ye have your closes,
                                    And all must die.

Onely a sweet and vertuous soul,
Like season'd timber, never gives;
But though the whole world turn to coal,
                                    Then chiefly lives.