The Daylight Is Dying (Huub de Lange)

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• CPDL #17419:   

Editor: Huub de Lange (submitted 2008-07-03).   Score information: A4, 18 pages   Copyright: Personal

Edition notes: Includes piano-choral score and separate piano accompaniment score.

General Information

Title: The Daylight Is Dying
Composer: Huub de Lange
Lyricist: A.B. Banjo Paterson

Number of voices: 4vv   Voicing: SATB
Genre: Secular, Partsong

Language: English
Instruments: Piano
Published: 2008

Description: #4 from 4 Romantic Poems, recent settings of poems by Emily Dickinson, William Blake, Alice Stuart and A.B. Banjo Paterson

External websites:

Original text and translations

English text

The daylight is dying
Away in the west,
The wild birds are flying
in silence to rest;
In leafage and frondage
Where shadows are deep,
They pass to its bondage--
The kingdom of sleep
And watched in their sleeping
By stars in the height,
They rest in your keeping,
O wonderful night.
When night doth her glories
Of starshine unfold,
'Tis then that the stories
Of bush-land are told.

Unnumbered I told them
In memories bright,
But who could unfold them,
Or read them aright?
Beyond all denials
The stars in their glories,
The breeze in the myalls,
Are part of these stories.

The waving of grasses,
The song of the river
That sings as it passes
For ever and ever,
The hobble-chains' rattle,
The calling of birds,
The lowing of cattle
Must blend with the words.

Without these, indeed you
Would find it ere long,
As though I should read you
The words of a song
That lamely would linger
When lacking the rune,
The voice of a singer,
The lilt of the tune.

But as one halk-bearing
An old-time refrain,
With memory clearing,
Recalls it again,
These tales roughly wrought of
The Bush and its ways,
May call back a thought of
The wandering days;
And, blending with each
In the memories that throng
There haply shall reach
You some echo of song.