From the Sea: Five Songs for Soprano

Song Collection

From the Sea: Five Songs for Soprano sets five poems of Sara Teasdale. The song cycle is published as part of John Duke's Songs, Vol. 1, High Voice by Southern Music Publishing.

In this song cycle, John Duke divides one poem of Sara Teasdale, "From the Sea," into five songs. The first stanza of the poem is the first song, the second stanza is the second song, and so forth. The song list is below as well as Teasdale's poem in its entirety.

Date: 1900Composer: John Woods DukeText: Sara Teasdale

Print vitals & song text

Songs

1. All Beauty Calls You to Me
2. Listen, I Love You
3. I Am So Weak a Thing
4. All Things in the World Can Rest, But I
5. Oh, My Love

Text

From the Sea
by Sara Teasdale

 

All beauty calls you to me, and you seem,
Past twice a thousand miles of shifting sea,
To reach me. You are as the wind I breathe
Here on the ship’s sun-smitten topmost deck,
With only light between the heavens and me.
I feel your spirit and I close my eyes,
Knowing the bright hair blowing in the sun,
The eager whisper and the searching eyes.

 

Listen, I love you. Do not turn your face
Nor touch me. Only stand and watch awhile
The blue unbroken circle of the sea.
Look far away and let me ease my heart
Of words that beat in it with broken wing.
Look far away, and if I say too much,
Forget that I am speaking. Only watch,
How like a gull that sparkling sinks to rest,
The foam-crest drifts along a happy wave
Toward the bright verge, the boundary of the world.

 

I am so weak a thing, praise me for this,
That in some strange way I was strong enough
To keep my love unuttered and to stand
Altho’ I longed to kneel to you that night
You looked at me with ever-calling eyes.
Was I not calm? And if you guessed my love
You thought it something delicate and free,
Soft as the sound of fir-trees in the wind,
Fleeting as phosphorescent stars in foam.
Yet in my heart there was a beating storm
Bending my thoughts before it, and I strove
To say too little lest I say too much,
And from my eyes to drive love’s happy shame.
Yet when I heard your name the first far time
It seemed like other names to me, and I
Was all unconscious, as a dreaming river
That nears at last its long predestined sea;
And when you spoke to me, I did not know
That to my life’s high altar came its priest.
But now I know between my God and me
You stand forever, nearer God than I,
And in your hands with faith and utter joy
I would that I could lay my woman’s soul.

 

Oh, my love
To whom I cannot come with any gift
Of body or of soul, I pass and go.
But sometimes when you hear blown back to you
My wistful, far-off singing touched with tears,
Know that I sang for you alone to hear,
And that I wondered if the wind would bring
To him who tuned my heart its distant song.
So might a woman who in loneliness
Had borne a child, dreaming of days to come,
Wonder if it would please its father’s eyes.
But long before I ever heard your name,
Always the undertone’s unchanging note
In all my singing had prefigured you,
Foretold you as a spark foretells a flame.
Yet I was free as an untethered cloud
In the great space between the sky and sea,
And might have blown before the wind of joy
Like a bright banner woven by the sun.
I did not know the longing in the night–
You who have waked me cannot give me sleep.

 

All things in all the world can rest, but I,
Even the smooth brief respite of a wave
When it gives up its broken crown of foam,
Even that little rest I may not have.
And yet all quiet loves of friends, all joy
In all the piercing beauty of the world
I would give up–go blind forevermore,
Rather than have God blot from out my soul
Remembrance of your voice that said my name.
For us no starlight stilled the April fields,
No birds awoke in darkling trees for us,
Yet where we walked the city’s street that night
Felt in our feet the singing fire of spring,
And in our path we left a trail of light
Soft as the phosphorescence of the sea
When night submerges in the vessel’s wake
A heaven of unborn evanescent stars.

Sheet Music

Songs By John Duke, Vol. 1

Composer(s): John Duke

Song(s): 1. When the Rose Is Brightest (Nathaniel Parker Willis)
2. Stopping by Woods on а Snowy Evening (Robert Frost)
3. The Puritan's Ballad (Elinor Wylie)
4. Midcentury Love Letter (Phyllis McGinley)
5. All Beauty Calls You to Me (Sara Teasdale)
6. Listen, I Love You (Sara Teasdale)
7. I am so weak а Thing (Sara Teasdale)
8. All Things in the World Can Rest, But I (Sara Teasdale)
9. Oh, My Love (Sara Teasdale)
10. Renouncement (Alice Meynell)
11. Noonday (Traditional Chinese)
12. Through Your Window (Traditional Chinese)
13. The Shoreless Sea (Traditional Chinese)
14. New Feet within My Garden Go (Emily Dickinson)
15. The Rose did Caper on Her Cheek (Emily Dickinson)
16. Have You Got а Brook in Your Little Heart? (Emily Dickinson)
17. I Taste а Liquor Never Brewed (Emily Dickinson)
18. The Better Part (George Santayana)

Voice Type: High

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