Songs
You lay so still in the sunshine
by Samuel Coleridge-Taylor From Songs of Sun and Shade (1911)
If you would like to use our texts and translations, please click here for more information.
Text
You lay so still in the sunshine
English source:
Marguerite Radclyffe Hall
You lay so still in the sunshine,
So still in that hot sweet hour –
That the timid things of the forest land
Came close; a butterfly lit on your hand,
Mistaking it for a flow’r.
You scarcely breath’d in your slumber,
So dreamless it was, so deep –
While the warm air stirr’d in my veins like wine,
The air that had blown thro’ a jasmine vine,
But you slept – and I let you sleep.
So still in that hot sweet hour –
That the timid things of the forest land
Came close; a butterfly lit on your hand,
Mistaking it for a flow’r.
You scarcely breath’d in your slumber,
So dreamless it was, so deep –
While the warm air stirr’d in my veins like wine,
The air that had blown thro’ a jasmine vine,
But you slept – and I let you sleep.
Composer
Samuel Coleridge-Taylor
Samuel Coleridge-Taylor (15 August 1875 – 1 September 1912) was a British composer and conductor.
Poet
Marguerite Radclyffe Hall
Marguerite Antonia Radclyffe Hall (12 August 1880 - 7 October 1943) was an English poet and author. She is best known for her novel The Well of Loneliness (1928).