Silent Noon

This is my all-time favorite English song. The marriage of the poetry (Rossetti) and music (Vaughan Williams) is absolutely breath-taking. It kills me every time I hear it. "The twofold silence was the song of love." Who knew?!?!

Silent Noon

Your hands lie open in the long fresh grass--
The finger-points look through like rosy blooms:
Your eyes smile peace. The pasture gleams and glooms
'Neath billowing skies that scatter and amass.
All round our nest, far as the eye can pass,
Are golden kingcup-fields with silver edge
Where the cow-parsley skirts the hawthorn-hedge.
'Tis visible silence, still as the hour-glass.

Deep in the sun-searched growth the dragon-fly
Hangs like a blue thread loosened from the sky:--
So this wing'd hour is dropt to us from above.
Oh! clasp we to our hearts, for deathless dower,
This close-companioned inarticulate hour
When twofold silence was the song of love.

Dante Gabriel Rossetti