Songs

The Self-Unseeing

by Gerald Finzi From Before and After Summer (Songcycle) Op. 16

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Text

The Self-Unseeing
English source: Thomas Hardy

Here is the ancient floor,
Footworn and hollowed and thin,
Here was the former door
Where the dead feet walked in.

She sat here in her chair,
Smiling into the fire;
He who played stood there,
Bowing it higher and higher.

Childlike, I danced in a dream;
Blessings emblazoned that day;
Everything glowed with a gleam;
Yet we were looking away!

Composer

Gerald Finzi

Gerald Raphael Finzi was a British composer. He is best known as a choral composer, but also wrote in other genres.

Poet

Thomas Hardy

Thomas Hardy (2 June 1840 – 11 January 1928) was an English novelist and poet. A Victorian realist in the tradition of George Eliot, he was influenced both in his novels and in his poetry by Romanticism, especially William Wordsworth. He was highly…

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