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lyrics

Je vis, je meurs: je me brule et me noye.
J’ay chaut estreme en endurant froidure:
La vie m’est et trop molle et trop dure.
J’ay grans ennuis entremeslez de joye:

Tout à coup je ris et je larmoye,
Et en plaisir maint grief tourment j’endure:
Mon bien s’en va, et à jamais il dure:
Tout en un coup je seiche et je verdoye.

Ainsi Amour inconstamment me meine:
Et quand je pense avoir plus de douleur,
Sans y penser je me treuve hors de peine.

Puis, quand je croy ma joye estre certeine,
Et estre au haut de mon desiré heur,
Il me remet en mon premier malheur.

…

I live, I die: I burn and I also drown.
I’m utterly hot and I feel cold.
Life is too soft and too hard for me to hold;
My joy and my heavy burden are mixed in one.

I laugh at the same time that I weep and frown;
The tarnish of grief has marred my pleasure’s gold;
My good flies away, but stays until it’s old;
I wither just as I find out that I’ve grown.

This is how love guides me, so changeably
That when I think the pain has me controlled,
With my very next thought I find I am free.

Then, just as I trust in joy so certainly
That the peak of a yearned-for hour makes me bold,
He shows me my familiar grief unfold.

credits

from Sept Sonnets de Louise Labé (2021), released March 18, 2022

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Thomas Oboe Lee Cambridge, Massachusetts

Thomas Oboe Lee was born in China in 1945. He lived in São Paulo, Brazil, for six years before coming to the United States in 1966. After graduating from the University of Pittsburgh, he studied composition at the New England Conservatory and Harvard University. He has been a member of the music faculty at Boston College since 1990. ... more

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