EChO 2025 Special Concert Program Texts

Peace
Text by Walter de la Mare (1873-1956)

Night arches England, and the winds are still;
Jasmine and honeysuckle steep the air;
Softly the stars that are all Europe’s fill
Her heaven-wide dark with radiancy fair;
That shadowed moon now waxing in the west
Stirs not a rumour on her tranquil seas;
Mysterious sleep has lulled her heart to rest,
Deep even as theirs beneath her churchyard trees.

Secure, serene; dumb now the night-hawk’s threat;
The guns’ low thunder drumming o’er the tide;
The anguish pulsing in her stricken side….
All is at peace… Ah, never, heart, forget:
For this her youngest, best, and bravest died,
These bright dews once were mixed with blood and sweat.

 

Dreaming
Text by Louis de Courmont; English Version by Eugene Oudin 

In dreams my heart seemed, as in olden times,
A source of beauty, of beauty rare;
And he the bird of paradise,
Upon its bosom fair.

In dreams my eye appeared, a ray, a purest ray,
Of spring’s eternal light;
And he, he the butterfly so gay
With his wings wide and bright!

Ah! In my dreams, my body seemed so still,
So very still, more white than snow;
And he the shroud of spotless white
That shielded me below.
In my dreams, my still body was colder than snow.

In dreams my lips appeared as half-blown flowers,
Sweet, growing in the summer air;
And he the breeze, the breeze that every hour
Does stir its leaves so fair.

In dreams my bosom seemed an oasis green,
Surrounded by the desert sand,
And he, he was resting in its shade,
Longing for this native land.

Ah! In my dreams! I saw my soul, lonely,
Lost in space, in aimless groping lost to love,
And he the angel who bears it to our God above.

Madonna of our pain (from I gioielli della Madonna)
Text by C. Zangarini & E. Golisciani; English Version by Claude Aveling

Madonna of our pain! Take thou pity! Take thou pity on me! Madonna! One token!
Ah! Thou hast heard me! Thou dost not condemn me!
Yes, thou dost give me a token, thou dost pardon!
See there! The seraphim, in paradise, with all the angels!
Ah, weep not so, beloved mother mine!
The Blessed Virgin looks upon me and pardons me:
She calls me to Heaven! Ah, dearest mother, addio! Mother, addio!

Irreverent Demand
Text by Victor Hugo (1802-1885)

Laughter from such a pretty face is wrong: sheer treason!
Thus forcing me to strive to keep a grip on reason!
Laughter from such a charming soul is so cruel when set beside
Those dreams which only serve to show her beauty magnified!

One thing perhaps which you might find quite surprising:
The shiver of the wind at your window’s rising.
April begins to glow; the waves in the sea are less distressed;
All seems to say aloud to the warbler: Make your nest!

Sweet songstress of the night, how can you have the right
To own a heart so cold when those eyes are burning bright?
A beauty so refined should surely should surely stay in hiding;
A lover lost and missed: what point is there exciting?
One grows tired, my coquette, to always be afraid.
You are the racquet, I the ball which you have played.

The waning weathercock, the master of his domain,
Signals the public danger that a beauty will e’er remain.
How right he is! I do believe that in glory alone
Will two such lovely eyes burn with a light of their own.

Fear those that hold you captive, and keep your distance;
And then in your fragility build strong resistance.
Too much! What should I love, madam, now? When all my dreams
Have been invested in you who hate me, so it seems!

Love aims its arrows, we cry out in fear,
But there’s nothing we can do to stop them, it would appear.
But beware the flight of the dart;
If victory comes too easily won, it may ricochet and pierce the heart.

Of this you may be sure: one day you will inflict
A grave wound on yourself that you’ll love: this I predict.
Sin’s neighbor, ecstasy, you will soon find that you know.
In truth the soul is just a leaning vase that’s tilted low.

You will know, and be touched, the moment
When you cry aloud with what you feel:
Ah! What secrets you’ll reveal!
You will know, spoiled child, the tears, the gloom, the lump in your throat,
As in haste you must hide a lover’s note.
There’s no need to conceal the warmth you’ll someday come to feel
From a letter—who knows?—tucked beneath your underclothes.

hen you laugh! Your great joy exchanges all for nought!
In vain the dawn bursts red. In vain a song is wrought.
Ah, well! I’m laughing too. All things must pass.
Oh, muse! Let’s get away!

Over there I see a farmer’s roof. What humble grace it does display.
An aviary in that tree is filled with voices;
While in the sprouting ivy a goat makes choices.
At play beneath a climbing vine a village boy is stood.
He’s wearing makeshift earrings, two cherries from the wood!

The Little Mermaid
Text after H.C. Andersen; English Version by F.L. Lynch

Death now awaits me… To melt into foam on the waves.
Ah! The stars are now fading…
When the first red rays of sunlight fall onto the gliding ship,
I will sink down! And never will I see him again,
For whom my heart aches with silent longing;
Who smiling peacefully in sleep now rests,
And beside him his royal bride.

Death now awaits me…
When humans perish, then do their souls
Fly to far-off heavenly lands, to shimmering paradise!
But I—poor little mermaid—can never go there!
I must drift as dead foam on the surface of the waves.

And now, already in the heights, rosy morning clouds glow;
Sorrowful voices echo from far, wailing over the sea.
How long now since I have heard them.
Is it my sisters’ floating throng? How sad is their deep lamenting!
Thus did they last sing to me of old, warning me to avoid men.
Sweet melodies did they sing to me of human joy, and of human woe,
Of distant wonders in paradise, and how we would never see them.

If only there could be a man who could draw me to his breast,
And pour his soul into me, and fill me with eternal love,
And pierce me like the sharpest sword with every human joy and pain.
Only then would I attain Paradise! Only if a man would give his love,
And never forsake me.

I must see him once again, only once—and then to die!
I will draw back the curtain at the entrance to his chambers.
Ah! You are so beautiful! You whom I have carried in my heart,
Lovingly and with such pain. Be still, my heart! Why do you race?
Does he not smile gladly as he dreams?
Is his royal bride not resting next to him, sweet and close?
Heart, be still! Stop racing so!
Once unwittingly he rested on my warm breast
When I bore him towards the land,
Out of the waves and fury of the storm.

Now farewell, Son of Man.
Fire lights the sky as now your wedding-morning breaks
My heart and body in pieces.
Now I am without a home in the deep lap of the ocean.
Homeless in the land of men since you welcomed in your bride!
Ah! You never drew me to your breast out of love and desire,
To pour your soul into me, to fill me with undying love.

How sudden, like a stabbing sword, I feel the torment of human pain.
The sun is rising! Joy may it bring you, I sink in death,
I plunge into the sea. O death!

Am I now dead? Or am I living? Floating now, so radiant and free.
Upwards, rising in splendor, golden beams on every side,
Coming from the wide gates of Heaven!
Peace in the morning heights! Nowhere darkness! Nowhere pain!
Peace has come down to the sea! Blissful choirs sing in the air!
Here a thousand radiant figures! Here a thousand heavenly powers!
Everywhere is glorious music, sung by lovely hushed voice choirs!
Ever greater bliss and splendor, now the sun shines ever brighter!
Pain and worlds sink ever deeper! Ever close the vaults of Heaven!
Alleluia in the distance! Now are new stars blazing!
Paradise opens its threshold! Source of the eternal light!
Voices singing: Alleluia! Alleluia! Louder and louder!
Alleluia from afar! New stars ever blazing!
Alleluia! Alleluia forever more! Alleluia!

Thou blessed Virgin Mother (from Die Wallfahrt nach Kevlaar)
Text by Heinrich Heine; English Version by Dr. Theo. Baker

Thou blessed Virgin Mother, thou Maid divine,
Thou Queen of Heaven, O hear me,
Kneeling before thy shrine!
My mother and I together are dwellers in Cologne.
’Tis there so many chapels and churches fill all the town.
Our neighbor’s daughter was Margret, but she is now no more.
O Queen! I bring thee a wax heart; heal thou my heart so sore!
Heal thou my heart so wounded, heal thou my heart so sore!
And ever more to thee I’ll pray and I’ll sing with devotion:
All hail, all hail, O Mary, hail to thee!

I was there (from Five Poems of Walt Whitman)
Text by Walt Whitman (1819-1892)

I understand the large hearts of heroes,
The courage of present times and all times,
How the skipper saw the crowded and rudderless wreck of the steam-ship,
and Death chasing it up and down the storm,
How he knuckled tight and gave not back an inch,
and was faithful of days and faithful of nights,
And chalked in large letters on a board, Be of good cheer, we will not desert you;
How he followed with them and tacked with them three days and would not give it up,
How he saved the drifting company at last,
How the lank loose-gowned women looked
when boated from the side of their prepared graves,
How the silent old-faced infants and the lifted sick, and the sharp-lipp’d unshaved men,
All this I swallow, it tastes good, I like it well, it becomes mine,
I am the man, I suffered, I was there.

All That Gold (from Amahl and the Night Visitors)
Text by the composer

All that gold! All that gold! I wonder if rich people know what to do with their gold!
Do they know how a child could be fed? Do rich people know?
Do they know that a house can be kept warm all day with burning logs?
Do rich people know? Do they know how to roast sweet corn on the fire?
Do they know? Do they know how to fill a courtyard with doves?
Do they know? Do they know how to milk a clover-fed goat?
Do they know? Do they know how to spice hot wine on cold winter nights?
Do they know? Do they know?
All that gold! All that gold! Oh, what I could do for my child with that gold!
Why should it all go to a child they don’t even know?
They are asleep. Do I dare? If I take some, they’ll never miss it…
For my child… For my child… For my child…

Romance (from Si j’étais roi)
Text by A. Dennery and J. Brésil; English Version by F.L. Lynch

I don’t know her name, or her birth,
When in the waves, distraught, I saw her face.
Seemed she so pure, not of this earth,
Radiant and clothed in nothing more than grace.
Beautiful was she whom I saved,
And this is what I know about her:
Can one ask the dawn as it comes forth
Suddenly from darkness to light up the sky,
If the golden ray that adorns her
Comes from here on earth or from heaven above,
Comes from here on the earth, or from heaven,
From here on earth or from the heavens above.

In seeking her I have no guide
But her image and this modest ring
Which slipped from her wet fingers,
And which I want to keep until I die.
And when I sigh, this little ring
Seems to say to me: look here on earth.
But the image tells me to look away
From the real world to the heavens above.
I can no longer stay on earth,
Since all the angels are in heaven,
Since all the angels, yes, the angels are in heaven.

The Bay of Seven Islands
Poem by John Greenleaf Whittier (1807-1892)

The skipper sailed out of the harbor mouth,
Leaving the apple-bloom of the South
For the ice of the Northern seas,
In his fishing schooner Breeze.

Handsome and brave and young was he,
And the maids of Newbury sighed to see
His lessening white sail fall
Under the sea’s blue wall.

Through the Northern Gulf and the misty screen
Of the isles of Mingan and Madeleine,
St. Paul’s and Blanc Sablon,
The little Breeze sailed on,

Backward and forward, along the shore
Of lorn and desolate Labrador,
And found at last her way
To the Seven Islands Bay.

The little hamlet, nestling below
Great hills white with lingering snow,
With its tin-roofed chapel stood
Half hid in the dwarf spruce wood;

Green-turfed, flower-sown, the last outpost
Of summer upon the dreary coast,
With its gardens small and spare,
Sad in the frosty air.

Hard by where the skipper’s schooner lay,
A fisherman’s cottage looked away
Over isle and bay, and behind
On mountains dim-defined.

And there twin sisters, fair and young,
Laughed with their stranger guest, and sung
In their native tongue the lays
Of the old Provencal days.

Alike were they, save the faint outline
Of a scar on Suzette’s forehead fine;
And both, it so befell,
Loved the heretic stranger well.

Both were pleasant to look upon,
But the heart of the skipper clave to one;
Though less by his eye than heart
He knew the twain apart.

Despite of alien race and creed,
Well did his wooing of Marguerite speed;
And the mother’s wrath was vain
As the sister’s jealous pain.

The shrill-tongued mistress her house forbade,
And solemn warning was sternly said
By the black-robed priest, whose word
As law the hamlet heard.

But half by voice and half by signs
The skipper said, “A warm sun shines
On the green-banked Merrimac;
Wait, watch, till I come back.

“And when you see, from my mast head,
The signal fly of a kerchief red,
My boat on the shore shall wait;
Come, when the night is late.”

Ah! weighed with childhood’s haunts and friends,
And all that the home sky overbends,
Did ever young love fail
To turn the trembling scale?

Under the night, on the wet sea sands,
Slowly unclasped their plighted hands
One to the cottage hearth,
And one to his sailor’s berth.

What was it the parting lovers heard?
Nor leaf, nor ripple, nor wing of bird,
But a listener’s stealthy tread
On the rock-moss, crisp and dead.

He weighed his anchor, and fished once more
By the black coast-line of Labrador;
And by love and the north wind driven,
Sailed back to the Islands Seven.

In the sunset’s glow the sisters twain
Saw the Breeze come sailing in again;
Said Suzette, “Mother dear,
The heretic’s sail is here.”

“Go, Marguerite, to your room, and hide;
Your door shall be bolted!” the mother cried:
While Suzette, ill at ease,
Watched the red sign of the Breeze.

At midnight, down to the waiting skiff
She stole in the shadow of the cliff;
And out of the Bay’s mouth ran
The schooner with maid and man.

And all night long, on a restless bed,
Her prayers to the Virgin Marguerite said
And thought of her lover’s pain
Waiting for her in vain.

Did he pace the sands? Did he pause to hear
The sound of her light step drawing near?
And, as the slow hours passed,
Would he doubt her faith at last?

But when she saw through the misty pane,
The morning break on a sea of rain,
Could even her love avail
To follow his vanished sail?

Meantime the Breeze, with favoring wind,
Left the rugged and desolate hills behind,
And heard from an unseen shore
The falls of white water roar.

On the morrow’s morn, in the thick, gray weather
They sat on the reeling deck together,
Lover and counterfeit,
Of hapless Marguerite.

With a lover’s hand, from her forehead fair
He smoothed away her jet-black hair.
What was it his fond eyes met?
The scar of the false Suzette!

Fiercely he shouted: “Bear away
East by north for Seven Isles Bay!”
The maiden wept and prayed,
But the ship her helm obeyed.

Once more the Bay of the Isles they found
They heard the bell of the chapel sound,
And the chant of the dying sung
In the harsh, wild native tongue.

A feeling of mystery, change, and awe
Was in all they heard and all they saw.
Spell-bound the hamlet lay
In the hush of its lonely bay.

And when they came to the cottage door,
The mother rose up from her weeping sore,
And with angry gestures met
The scared look of Suzette.

“Here is your daughter,” the skipper said;
“Give me the one I love instead.”
But the woman sternly spake;
“Go, see if the dead will wake!”

He looked. Her sweet face still and white
And strange in the noonday taper light,
She lay on her little bed,
With the cross at her feet and head.

In a passion of grief the strong man bent
Down to her face, and, kissing it, went
Back to the waiting Breeze,
Back to the mournful seas.

Never again to the Merrimac
And Newbury’s homes that ship came back.
Whatever the fate she met,
There is nothing known of her yet.

The ship has been gone for many a day,
But even yet at Seven Isles Bay
Is told the ghostly tale
Of a weird, unspoken sail.

On the deck a maiden wrings her hands;
Her likeness kneels on the gray coast sands;
One in her wild despair,
And one in the trance of prayer.

She flits before no earthly blast,
The red sign fluttering from her mast,
Over the solemn seas,
The ghost of the schooner Breeze!