The Earth has many keys -

"The Earth has many keys -" is the third song in Leo Smit's song cycle The Celestial Thrush. The Celestial Thrush is the second of Smit's six song cycles setting the poetry of Emily Dickinson.

For more information about Leo Smit's Emily Dickinson song cycles, please visit the pages for The Ecstatic Pilgrimage and Leo Smit.

For inquiries about Leo Smit and to obtain sheet music, please contact Nils Vigeland at [email protected].

Date: 1990Composer: Leo SmitText: Emily DickinsonSong Collection: The Celestial Thrush

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Text

The Earth has many keys – (poem 1775)
by Emily Dickinson

The Earth has many keys –
Where Melody is not
Is the Unknown Peninsula –
Beauty – is Nature’s Fact –

But Witness for Her Land –
And Witness for Her Sea –
The Cricket is Her utmost
Of Elegy, to Me –

—–

This poem is part of a longer poem, which has been printed in several versions. The text of this particular song is in bold:

Further in Summer than the Birds (poem 1068)
by Emily Dickinson

Further in Summer than the Birds –
Pathetic from the Grass –
A Minor Nation celebrates
It’s unobtrusive Mass –

No Ordinance be seen –
So gradual the Grace
A pensive Custom it becomes
Enlarging Loneliness –

‘Tis Audiblest, at Dusk –
When Day’s attempt is done –
And Nature nothing waits to do
But terminate in Tune –

Nor difference it knows
Of Cadence, or of Pause –
But simultaneous as Same –
The Service emphacize –

Nor know I when it cease –
At Candles, it is here –
When Sunrise is – that it is not –
Than this, I know no more –

The Earth has many keys –
Where Melody is not
Is the Unknown Peninsula –
Beauty – is Nature’s Fact –

But Witness for Her Land –
And Witness for Her Sea –
The Cricket is Her utmost
Of Elegy, to Me –

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