Lyrics by Frank DiGiacomo with assistance from Julian R. Pace. Illustration by Arthur Rackham.
Abandoned, Undine laments her fate while the festivities of her beloved Prince are taking place.
LYRICS
Undine:
So ends my song, an echo in the autumn wind.
My fragile hopes fade with the spring, ah, and I am left all alone.
“Alas”, the brook laments in her wandering, “sing love-songs never more,
your time for singing now is past, now you must weep and sigh with us.
Ah, ah! Undine, Undine, where have you gone?
Where is she who would dance with the springtime and sing with the sea?”
“Forever gone!” cries the owl on his branch;
the mourning dove weeps and calls me.
I hear your call, I know you...but I can no longer answer you.
My tongue has grown thick with the words of men,
and I know not the sound of my own voice.
I hear you, and I would follow you now,
but I am weighed down and have lost the path.
Where once I could travel by water and wind,
now are my feet shod with dead leaves and snow!
Where once I felt the embrace of trees as with their branches
they combed back my hair,
now they claw at my back as they thrust me away!
All this, all this for one who would teach me to love!
His voice was all voices to me!
His embrace, all things living, and in his eyes was all light.
Sad, sad my fate, for now I can only gaze at him,
unseen, and yearning,
a memory too distant and weak to claim him.
“Alas, alas!” So weep and lament all things that have life
for the fair Undine who is dying of love.
Ah, ah! So ends my song, an echo in the autumn wind.
My fragile hopes fade with the spring, ah, and I am left all alone.
“Alas”, the brook laments in her wandering,
“sing love-songs never more,
your time for singing now is past, now you must weep and sigh with us
for the fair Undine who is dying, dying of love.”
Ah, ah!