Words and music by Stephen Collins Foster. First edition: Baltimore: F.D. Benteen [1850].
This is perhaps Foster's most ambitious and successful "serious" song. Better known for his sentimental pieces in stereoptypical African-American dialect ("Old Black Joe"), or his lighter minstrel songs ("Oh! Susanna"), Foster composed a number of highly skillful, though unpretentious, "art" songs. A characteristic of his genius was his ability to use the simplest harmonic devices to the greatest effect, and this song represents no fundamental departure in this respect. But in the context of the uniquely Fosterian style, the brief shift to the minor mode in the solo piano passages following each verse is particularly striking. Especially unusual, too, is Foster's vocal ornament at the end of the second quatrain of each verse.
Sung by Thomas Hampson:
Sung by a soprano
Ah! may the red rose live alway,
To smile upon earth and sky!
Why should the beautiful ever weep?
Why should the beautiful die?
Lending a charm to ev'ry ray
That falls on her cheeks of light,
Giving the zephyr kiss for kiss,
And nursing the dew-drop bright--
Ah! may the red rose live alway,
To smile upon earth and sky!
Why should the beautiful ever weep?
Why should the beautiful die?
Long may the daisies dance the field,
Frolicking far and near!
Why should the innocent hide their heads?
Why should the innocent fear?
Spreading their petals in mute delight
When morn in its radiance breaks,
Keeping a floral festival
Till the night-loving primrose wakes--
Long may the daisies dance the field,
Frolicking far and near!
Why should the innocent hide their heads?
Why should the innocent fear?
Lulled be the dirge in the cypress bough,
That tells of departed flowers!
Ah! that the butterfly's gilded wing
Fluttered in evergreen bowers!
Sad is my heart for the blighted plants--
Its pleasures are aye as brief--
They bloom at the young year's joyful call,
And fade with the autumn leaf:
Ah! may the red rose live alway,
To smile upon earth and sky!
Why should the beautiful ever weep?
Why should the beautiful die?
