Softly sweet (Howard Kingsbury)

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• (Posted 2024-04-24)  CPDL #80388:     

Editor: David Anderson (submitted 2024-04-24).   Score information: Letter, 8 pages, 378 kB   Copyright: Personal

Edition notes:

General Information

Title: Softly sweet
Composer: Howard Kingsbury
Lyricist: James Gates Percival
Number of voices: 4vv   Voicing: SATB
Genre: Secular, Partsong

Language: English
Instruments: A cappella

First published: 1874 Taintor Brothers
Description: 

Original text and translations

English text

Softly sweet the song is stealing, softly through the night afar;
Faint and low the bell is pealing; dim, through haze, the light of star;
Hushed and still is all around me; cold and still my brooding heart:
Sure some magic spell hath bound me,—bid, O bid the spell depart!

O, that song, so softly breathing,—how it flows into my soul!
Memory then her twine unwreathing, tears of young emotion roll:
And, as far the knell is tolling, how my spirit floats away,
Over years, like billows, rolling, to the scenes where youth was gay!

But the night, so hushed around me, and the sky, so dim above,
In a lonely trance have bound me,—trance of mingled grief and love.
Still on early fondness dwelling, faded bloom of vernal years;
All I hear, the sigh faint swelling; all I feel, my trickling tears.