The Dew Upon / Lament

2022. SATB, piano, and cello / 5:30

Score PDF

This piece radiates sadness and beauty.

The text draws from two poems published in 1926 by Mabel Simpson: “The Dew Upon” and “Lament.”  These poems are “radiant in their simplicity, undecorated outpourings and musings of a highly inward spirit, intuitive to a degree, preoccupied with the divested self and with the barest and most fundamental of spiritual values.”  The Dew Upon / Lament is an original choral work for high school, community, or university choir. 

Performed here by the Rocky Mountain Chamber Choir - Virtual Singers.

The Dew Upon / Lament

 

THE DEW UPON

The dew upon

The leaf now lies,

Now to her home

The sparrow flies,

And vaster are the embodied skies.

There is a mist

On every blade,

Sleep wanders where

The swallow played,

Pale shadow over all is laid.

Oh, grief could leave

No burden now

Upon the drifting

Willow bough,

For what has been

And what is not

Are both within this peace forgot.

LAMENT

From twig and bough

The leaves have blown;

From every branch

The birds have flown;

And voices, voices there are none.

Sleep holds the meadow;

And the hill,

Close wrapped in dreams,

Is warm and still.

The wan winds wander

Where they will.

Now in the dust

The petals lie

Of many a flower

Born to die.

And lonely, lonely is the sky.