The Ballad of the Harp Weaver (Barbara Rosen): Difference between revisions
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'''Description:''' Selected verses from "The Ballad of the Harp Weaver" by Edna St. Vincent Millay | '''Description:''' Selected verses from "The Ballad of the Harp Weaver" by Edna St. Vincent Millay |
Revision as of 04:05, 5 January 2020
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- Editor: John Hetland (submitted 2020-01-01). Score information: Letter, 7 pages, 580 kB Copyright: CPDL
- Edition notes:
General Information
Title: The Ballad of the Harp Weaver
Composer: Barbara Rosen
Lyricist: Edna St. Vincent Millaycreate page
Number of voices: 4vv Voicing: SATB
Genre: Secular, Art song
Language: English
Instruments: A cappella
First published: 2005
Description: Selected verses from "The Ballad of the Harp Weaver" by Edna St. Vincent Millay
External websites:
Original text
English text
Men say the winter was bad that year
Fuel was scarce and food was dear.
A wind with a wolf's head howled about our door
And we burned up the chairs and sat upon the floor
All that was left us was a chair we couldn't break
And a harp with a woman's head nobody would take
for song or pity sake
In the deep night I felt my mother rise
And stare down upon me with love in her eyes
I saw my mother sitting on the one good chair
A light falling on her from I couldn't tell where
Looking nineteen and not a day older
And the harp with a woman's head leaned against her shoulder.
Her thin fingers moving in the thin tall strings
Were weave, weave, weaving wonderful things.
Many bright threads from where I couldn't see
Were running through the harp strings rapidly.
She sang as she worked and the harp strings spoke;
her voice never faltered and the thread never broke.
And when I awoke, there sat my mother
With the harp against her shoulder
looking nineteen and not a day older.
A smile about her lips and a light about her head
And her hands in the harp strings frozen dead
And piled up beside her, toppling to the skies
Were the clothes of a king's son just my size.