Romance & Tango (2015)

For Mezzo-Soprano & Piano

Duration - 12’

Texts by John Keats (1795 - 1821)

Premiered by Elizabeth Boyman & Jon Gmeinder at Manhattan School of Music on May 8th, 2015

1. Dedication.

Glory and loveliness have passed away;

For if we wander out in early morn,

No wreathed incense do we see upborne

Into the east, to meet the smiling day:

No crowd of nymphs soft voic’d and young, 

and gay,

In woven baskets bringing ears of corn,

Roses, and pinks, and violets, to adorn

The shrine of Flora in her early May

But there are left delights as high as these,

And I shall ever bless my destiny,

That in a time, when under pleasant trees

Pan is no longer sought, I feel a free

A leafy luxury, seeing I could please

With these poor offerings, a man like thee.

2. Faery Song

Shed no tear!  O shed no tear!

The flower will bloom another year.

Weep no more!  O weep no more!

Young buds sleep in the root's white core,

Dry your eyes!  O dry your eyes!

For I was taught in Paradise

To ease my breast of melodies -

Shed no tear

Overhead!  Look overhead!

'Mong the blossoms white and red -

Look up, look up!  I flutter now

On this fresh pomegranate bough.

See me!  'tis this silvery bill

Ever cures the good man's ill.

Shed no tear!  O shed no tear!

The flower will bloom another year.

Adieu, Adieu – I vanish in the heaven's blue –

Adieu, Adieu! 

3. Bright Star

Bright star! Would I were steadfast as thou art 

Not in lone splendor hung aloft the night,

And watching, with eternal lids apart,

Like Nature's patient sleepless Eremite,

The moving waters at their priestlike task

Of pure ablution round earth's human shores,

Or gazing on the new soft fallen mask

Of snow upon the mountains and the moors -

No – yet still steadfast, still unchangeable,

Pillow'd upon my fair love's ripening breast,

To feel for ever its soft swell and fall,

Awake forever in a sweet unrest,

Still, still to hear her tender-taken breath,

And so live ever – or else swoon to death.