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Music on Christmas Morning
‘Music I love – but never strain
Could kindle raptures so divine,
So grief assuage, so conquer pain,
And rouse this pensive heart of mine –
As that we hear on Christmas morn,
Upon the wintry breezes born.
Though Darkness still her empire keep,
And hours must pass, ere morning break;
From troubled dreams, or slumbers deep,
That music kindly bids us wake:
It calls us, with an angel’s voice,
To wake, and worship, and rejoice;
To greet with joy the glorious morn,
Which angels welcomed long ago,
When our redeeming Lord was born,
To bring the light of Heaven below;
The Powers of Darkness to dispel,
And rescue Earth from Death and Hell.
While listening to that sacred strain,
My raptured spirit soars on high;
I seem to hear those songs again
Resounding through the open sky,
That kindled such divine delight,
In those who watched their flocks by night.
With them – I celebrate His birth –
Glory to God, in highest Heaven,
Good will to men, and peace on Earth,
To us a saviour-king is given;
Our God is come to claim His own,
And Satan’s power is overthrown!
A sinless God, for sinful men,
Descends to suffer and to bleed;
Hell must renounce its empire then;
The price is paid, the world is freed.
And Satan’s self must now confess,
That Christ has earned a Right to bless:
Now holy Peace may smile from heaven,
And heavenly Truth from earth shall spring:
The captive’s galling bonds are riven,
For our Redeemer is our king;
And He that gave his blood for men
Will lead us home to God again.’
Anne Brontë
(1820 – 1849)
Music on Christmas Morning (1843)
Anne Brontë (1820 – 1849) was an English novelist and poet, the youngest member of the Brontë literary family. Charlotte (1816–1855) and Emily Brontë (1818–1848) were her sisters.
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Menschheit
Menschheit vor Feuerschlünden aufgestellt,
Ein Trommelwirbel, dunkler Krieger Stirnen,
Schritte durch Blutnebel; schwarzes Eisen schellt,
Verzweiflung, Nacht in traurigen Gehirnen:
Hier Evas Schatten, Jagd und rotes Geld.
Gewölk, das Licht durchbricht, das Abendmahl.
Es wohnt in Brot und Wein ein sanftes Schweigen
Und jene sind versammelt zwölf an Zahl.
Nachts schrein im Schlaf sie unter Ölbaumzweigen;
Sankt Thomas taucht die Hand ins Wundenmal.
Georg Trakl
(1887 – 1914)
Menschheit, 1913
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Approach
Apparelled in a mask of joy till now,
I knew thee not. Asleep, I see thy face
More simply. Sorrow s leisure lets me trace
The nicer lines. Thy sealed lids, thy brow,
Thy lasting posture, purposes avow ;
In thy spent form resides a moveless grace.
A pageant was thy life, and in its place
I find a truth to feed and to endow
My heart. Thy wonted mask of joy belied
The meaning death s bare attitude makes clear.
From living gesture thought went often wide,
And I was poor interpreter ; but here,
Where it would seem our thoughts anew divide,
The steady silence draws thy spirit near.
Gladys Cromwell
(1885-1919)
Approach
From: Songs of the Dust, 1915
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A Lark Above the Trenches 1916
Hushed is the shriek of hurtling shells: and hark!
Somewhere within that bit of soft blue sky-
Grand in his loneliness, his ecstasy,
His lyric wild and free – carols a lark.
I in the trench, he lost in heaven afar,
I dream of Love, its ecstasy he sings;
Doth lure my soul to love till like a star
It flashes into Life: O tireless wings
That beat love’s message into melody –
A song that touches in this place remote
Gladness supreme in its undying note
And stirs to life the soul of memory –
‘Tis strange that while you’re beating into life
Men here below and plunged in sanguine strife!
John William (Will) Streets
(1886 –1916)
A Lark Above the Trenches 1916
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Folded Power
Sorrow can wait,
For there is magic in the calm estate
Of grief; lo, where the dust complies
Wisdom lies.
Sorrow can rest,
Indifferent, with her head upon her breast;
Idle and hushed, guarded from fears;
Content with tears.
Sorrow can bide,
With sealèd lids and hands unoccupied.
Sorrow can fold her latent might,
Dwelling with night.
But Sorrow will rise
From her dream of sombre and hushed eternities.
Lifting a Child, she will softly move
With a mother’s love.
She will softly rise.
Her embrace the dying will recognize,
Lifting them gently through strange delight
To a clearer light.
Gladys Cromwell
(1885-1919)
Folded Power
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An meine Schwester
Wo du gehst wird Herbst und Abend,
Blaues Wild, das unter Bäumen tönt,
Einsamer Weiher am Abend.
Leise der Flug der Vögel tönt,
Die Schwermut über deinen Augenbogen.
Dein schmales Lächeln tönt.
Gott hat deine Lider verbogen.
Sterne suchen nachts Karfreitagskind
Deinen Stirnenbogen.
Georg Trakl
(1887 – 1914)
An meine Schwester, 1913
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A Soldier’s Funeral
No splendid show of solemn funeral rite,
No stricken mourners following his bier,
No peal of organ reaching thro’ his night,
Is rendered him whom now we bury here.
‘Tis but a soldier stricken in the fight,
A youth who flung his passion into life,
Flung scorn at Death, fought true for Freedom’s might,
Till Death did close his vision in the strife.
No splendid rite is here – yet lay him low,
Ye comrades of his youth he fought beside,
Close where the winds do sigh and wild flowers grow,
Where the sweet brook doth babble by his side.
No splendour, yet we lay him tenderly
To rest, his requiem the artillery.
John William (Will) Streets
(1886 –1916)
A Soldier’s Funeral
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Nähe des Todes
O der Abend, der in die finsteren Dörfer der Kindheit geht.
Der Weiher unter den Weiden
Füllt sich mit den verpesteten Seufzern der Schwermut.
O der Wald, der leise die braunen Augen senkt,
Da aus des Einsamen knöchernen Händen
Der Purpur seiner verzückten Tage hinsinkt.
O die Nähe des Todes. Laß uns beten.
Jn dieser Nacht lösen auf lauen Kissen
Vergilbt von Weihrauch sich der Liebenden schmächtige Glieder.
Georg Trakl
(1887 – 1914)
Nähe des Todes
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Autumn Communion
This autumn afternoon
My fancy need invent
No untried sacrament.
Man can still commune
With Beauty as of old:
The tree, the wind’s lyre,
The whirling dust, the fire—
In these my faith is told.
Beauty warms us all;
When horizons crimson burn,
We hold heaven’s cup in turn.
The dry leaves gleaming fall,
Crumbs of mystical bread;
My dole of Beauty I break,
Love to my lips I take,
And fear is quieted.
The symbols of old are made new:
I watch the reeds and the rushes,
The spruce trees dip their brushes
In the mountain’s dusky blue;
The sky is deep like a pool;
A fragrance the wind brings over
Is warm like hidden clover,
Though the wind itself is cool.
Across the air, between
The stems and the grey things,
Sunlight a trellis flings.
In quietude I lean:
I hear the lifting zephyr
Soft and shy and wild;
And I feel earth gentle and mild
Like the eyes of a velvet heifer.
Love scatters and love disperses.
Lightly the orchards dance
In a lovely radiance.
Down sloping terraces
They toss their mellow fruits.
The rhythmic wind is sowing,
Softly the floods are flowing
Between the twisted roots.
What Beauty need I own
When the symbol satisfies?
I follow services
Of tree and cloud and stone.
Color floods the world;
I am swayed by sympathy;
Love is a litany
In leaf and cloud unfurled.
Gladys Cromwell
(1885-1919)
Autumn Communion
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Comrades
Those whom I’ve known, admired, ardently friended
Lie silent there wrapp’d in a soldier’s shroud;
Death broke their dreams, their aspirations ended,
These sanguine youth, noble, brave and proud.
Slowly they bear them ‘neath the dim star light
Unto their rest – the soldiers’ cemetery:
The chaplain chants a low, brief litany;
The nightingale flings rapture on the night.
Back to their Mother Earth this night return
Unnumbered youth along the far-flung line;
But ’tis for these my eyes with feeling burn,
That Memory doth erect a fadeless shrine –
For these I’ve known, admired, ardently friended
Stood by when Death their love, their youth swift ended.
John William (Will) Streets
(1886 –1916)
Comrades
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Choice
Imperious Time, I must prefer
Thy just necessity:
Resign the silent, earlier
Beliefs grown dear to me.
The stillness left alternatives
To youth, a freedom wide
And dim as dreaming, but man lives,
And must one day decide.
There is a doom the years compel:
I must approach the goal
Decreed, where it behooves me dwell:
I must declare my soul;
Must speak and choose what stars pertain
To me ; needs must I rest
In their most intimate beams, remain
Committed and confessed.
I claim a tent of stars in place
Of heaven’s confusing dome:
A tent of stars in a dark space —
The sky must be my home.
Gladys Cromwell
(1885-1919)
Choice
From: Poems 1919
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Nacht im Schützengraben
Tief will sich der Himmel neigen,
Schwer von seiner Sternenlast.
Runde Leuchtraketen steigen
Auf zu seinem Blaudamast.
Rückwärts ist mein Kopf geglitten
Auf den Sand der Schulterwehr
Und mir ist, als wär ich mitten
In dem weißen Silbermeer.
Schüsse fallen, Rufe kommen,
Meine Hand kühlt kühlen Wind,
Und ich weiß kaum, traumbenommen,
Noch, was Stern, was Augen sind.
Gerhard Moerner
(1894-1917)
Aus: „Aus dem Felde“. Gedichte.
Kugelverlag, Hamburg 1917.
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