Songs

Omens and oracles

by Charles Ives From Sentimental Ballads

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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!

Composer

Charles Ives

Charles Edward Ives was an American modernist composer. Read more here.

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