Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening Robert Frost Whose woods these are I think I know. His house is in the village though; He will not see me stopping here To watch his woods fill up with snow. My little horse must think it queer To stop without a farmhouse near Between the woods and frozen lake The darkest evening of the year. He gives his harness bells a shake To ask if there is some mistake. The only other sound s the sweep Of easy wind and downy flake. The woods are lovely, dark and deep, But I have promises to keep, And miles to go before I sleep, And miles to go before I sleep. Setting by Ned Rorem
Setting by Charles Ives from 114 Songs Note: Gray letters indicate part of the section cut by composer. from Leaves of Grass by Walt Whitman Who goes there! hankering, gross, mystical, [and*] nude? How is it I extract strength from the beef I eat? What is a man anyhow? What am I? and what are you? All I mark as my own you shall offset it with your own, Else it were time lost listening to me. I do not snivel that snivel the world over, That months are vacuums and the ground but wallow and filth, That life is a suck and a sell, and nothing remains at the end but threadbare crape and tears. Whimpering and truckling fold with powders for invalids.... conformity goes to the fourth-removed, I cock my hat as I please indoors or out. Shall I pray? Shall I venerate and be ceremonious? I have pried through the strata and analyzed to a hair, And counselled with doctors and calculated close and found no sweeter fat than sticks to my own bones. In all people I see myself, none more and not one a barleycorn less, And the good or bad I say of myself I say of them. And I know I am solid and sound, To me the converging objects of the universe perpetually flow, All are written to me, and I must get what the writing means. And I know I am deathless, I know this orbit of mine cannot be swept by a carpenter's compass, I know I shall not pass like a child's carlacue cut with a burnt stick at night. I know I am august, I do not trouble my spirit to vindicate itself or be understood, I see that the elementary laws never apologize, I reckon I behave no prouder than the level I plant my house by after all. I exist as I am, that is enough, If no other in the world be aware I sit content, And if each and all be aware I sit content. One world is aware, and by far the largest to me, and that is myself, And whether I come to my own today or in ten thousand or ten million years, I can cheerfully take it now, or with equal cheerfulness I can wait. My foothold is tenoned and mortised in granite, I laugh at what you call dissolution, And I know the amplitude of time. * added by composer
Who Knows if the Moon s by e.e. cummings who knows if the moon s a baloon,coming out of a keen city in the sky filled with pretty people? (and if you and i should Settings by Dominic Argento from the cycle Songs About Spring get into it,if they should take me and take you into their baloon, why then we d go up higher with all the pretty people than houses and steeples and clouds: go sailing away and away sailing into a keen city which nobody s ever visited,where always it s Spring)and everyone s in love and flowers pick themselves
Setting by Lori Leitman from the cycle Plums This is Just to Say by William Carlos Williams I have eaten the plums that were in the icebox and which you were probably saving for breakfast Forgive me they were delicious so sweet and so cold
I Felt a Funeral in my Brain by Emily Dickinson I felt a Funeral, in my Brain, And Mourners to and fro Kept treading - treading - till it seemed That Sense was breaking through - And when they all were seated, A Service, like a Drum - Kept beating - beating - till I thought My mind was going numb - And then I heard them lift a Box And creak across my Soul With those same Boots of Lead, again, Then Space - began to toll, As all the Heavens were a Bell, And Being, but an Ear, And I, and Silence, some strange Race, Wrecked, solitary, here - And then a Plank in Reason, broke, And I dropped down, and down - And hit a World, at every plunge, And Finished knowing - then - There Came a Wind Like a Bugle by Emily Dickinson There came a Wind like a Bugle - It quivered through the Grass And a Green Chill upon the Heat So ominous did pass We barred the Windows and the Doors As from an Emerald Ghost - The Doom's electric Moccasin The very instant passed - On a strange Mob of panting Trees And Fences fled away And Rivers where the Houses ran Those looked that lived - that Day - The Bell within the steeple wild The flying tidings told - How much can come And much can go, And yet abide the World! Settings of Emily Dickinson by Aaron Copland and Ernst Bacon Note: Gray letters indicate sections cut by the composer.
How Happy is the Little Stone by Emily Dickinson How happy is the little stone That rambles in the road alone, And doesn't care about careers, And exigencies never fears; Whose coat of elemental brown A passing universe put on; And independent as the sun, Associates or glows alone, Fulfilling absolute decree In casual simplicity.