The Rossettis

In 2009 ben ik met Jan-Frans van Dijkhuizen begonnen met het maken van een cd met de Engelse gedichten die ik op muziek heb gezet. Jan-Frans heeft de nummers opnieuw gearrangeerd. Behalve jazzpianist is hij ook anglist, we kennen elkaar van de studie. We noemen ons The Rossettis, naar de schilder en dichter Dante Gabriel Rossetti en zijn zuster en dichteres Christina Rossetti.

Dit zijn enkele van de gedichten die we opgenomen hebben:

Dante Gabriel Rossetti (1828-1882)
Sudden Light

I have been here before,
But when or how I cannot tell:
I know the grass beyond the door,
The sweet keen smell,
The sighing sound, the lights around the shore.

You have been mine before,—
How long ago I may not know:
But just when at that swallow's soar
Your neck turned so,
Some veil did fall,—I knew it all of yore.
Has this been thus before?
And shall not thus time's eddying flight
Still with our lives our love restore
In death's despite,
And day and night yield one delight once more?

Emily Bronteะ (1818 – 1848)

'Tis moonlight, summer moonlight,
All soft and still and fair;
The solemn hour of midnight
Breathes sweet thoughts everywhere,

But most where trees are sending
Their breezy boughs on high,
Or stooping low are lending
A shelter from the sky.

And there in those wild bowers
A lovely form is laid;
Green grass and dew-steeped flowers
Wave gently round her head.

Christina Rossetti ( 1830 –1894)

Come to me in the silence of the night;
Come in the speaking silence of a dream;
Come with soft rounded cheeks and eyes as bright
As sunlight on a stream;
Come back in tears,
O memory, hope, love of finished years.

Oh dream how sweet, too sweet, too bitter-sweet,
Whose wakening should have been in Paradise,
Where souls brim-full of love abide and meet;
Where thirsting longing eyes
Watch the slow door
That opening, letting in, lets out no more.

Yet come to me in dreams, that I may live
My very life again though cold in death:
Come back to me in dreams, that I may give
Pulse for pulse, breath for breath:
Speak low, lean low,
As long ago, my love, how long ago.