If you would like to use our texts and translations, please click here for more information.
Text
Omens and oracles
English source:
Edward Robert Bulwer-Lytton
Phantoms of the future, spectres of the past,
In the wakeful night came round me sighing, crying ‘Fool beware!
Check the feeling o’er thee stealing! Let thy first love be thy last!
Or, if love again thou must, at least this fatal love forbear!’
Amara!
Now the dark breaks. Now the lark wakes. Now the voices fleet away.
Now the breeze about the blossom; now the ripple in the reed;
Beams and buds and birds begin to sing and say,
‘Love her for she loves thee.’ And I know not which to heed.
O, Cara Amara!
In the wakeful night came round me sighing, crying ‘Fool beware!
Check the feeling o’er thee stealing! Let thy first love be thy last!
Or, if love again thou must, at least this fatal love forbear!’
Amara!
Now the dark breaks. Now the lark wakes. Now the voices fleet away.
Now the breeze about the blossom; now the ripple in the reed;
Beams and buds and birds begin to sing and say,
‘Love her for she loves thee.’ And I know not which to heed.
O, Cara Amara!
Composer
Charles Ives
Charles Edward Ives was an American modernist composer. Read more here.
