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Four Keats Songs     I.  II.  III.  IV.
(total duration 6')
 
  IV. In  Drear-Nighted December

for Voice and Piano

duration 1½'

Composed for: Joyce Andrews
World Premiere: 1990, Oshkosh, Wisconsin

Play Audio Excerpt
Joyce Andrews, Soprano;
Neal Goren, Piano
(459k mp3)


First Page of Score




 
Text:
 
 
In drear-nighted December,
Too happy, happy tree,
Thy branches ne'er remember
Their green felicity:
The north cannot undo them,
With a sleety whistle through them;
Nor frozen thawings glue them
From budding at the prime.

In drear-nighted December,
Too happy, happy brook,
Thy bubblings ne'er remember
Apollo's summer look;
But with a sweet forgetting,
They stay their crystal fretting,
Never, never petting
About the frozen time.

Ah! would 'twere so with many
A gentle girl and boy!
But were there ever any
Writhed not of passèd joy?
The feeling not to feel it—
When there is none to heal it,
Nor numbèd sense to steel it,
Was never said in rhyme.

                                                John Keats

 


 

 

Play Audio Excerpt
Joyce Andrews, Soprano;
Neal Goren, Piano
(459k mp3)


First Page of Score

 
                            
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