Zygmunt Mycielski (1907–1987) was exposed to art since childhood – the Wiśniowa manor resounded with music and discussions of writers and painters, every evening mother read to her sons the most important works. Contacts with numerous artists had a significant impact on the development of Mycielski's artistic sensitivity. The artist noted his lively reactions to music; his sensitivity to the poetry was equally strong - he intuitively selected the literary sources of songs. Among the masters of writing, whose texts were set to music by Mycielski, there were the most outstanding Polish poets, including: Iwaszkiewicz, Miłosz and Herbert, but also Pawlikowska-Jasnorzewska, Staff, Zegadłowicz and Norwid, as well as Petroniusz, Rilke and Puszkin.Inspired by the semantics and expression of the text, Mycielski also composed instrumental pieces. The literary basis of the Mathematical Variations (1957) was Apollinaire's poem Orpheus, the Second Symphony (1960–1961) - fragments from Doctor Zhivago by Pasternak, while in the Fifth Symphony (1974–1977) the metrorhythmic patterns of the fourth movement reflected the rhythm of the poem Clouds by Miłosz.Until recently, it seemed that Mycielski's Songs for Orchestra (1978) was a kind of 20th-century reminiscence of the song without words genre. However, subsequent research began to reveal the poetic inspirations of individual links in the cycle, and today Herbert's poems can be indicated as the basis for the song cycle. The subject of the paper will be to demonstrate the levels at which Herbert's poetry resonates in Mycielski's composition.