Children (Thomas Willert Beale)

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• (Posted 2023-11-15)  CPDL #77354:     

Editor: David Anderson (submitted 2023-11-15).   Score information: Letter, 12 pages, 522 kB   Copyright: Personal

Edition notes:

General Information

Title: Children
Composer: Thomas Willert Beale
Lyricist: Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
Number of voices: 4vv   Voicing: SATB
Genre: Secular, Partsong

Language: English
Instruments: Piano

First published: 1867 Lamborn Cock, Addison & Co.
Description: Published using pseudonym Walter Maynard.

Original text and translations

English text

Come to me, O ye children!
For I hear you at your play,
And the questions that perplexed me
Have vanished quite away.

Ye open the eastern windows,
That look towards the sun,
Where thoughts are singing swallows
And the brooks of morning run.

In your hearts are the birds and the sunshine,
In your thoughts the brooklet's flow,
But in mine is the wind of Autumn
And the first fall of the snow.

Ah! what would the world be to us
If the children were no more?
We should dread the desert behind us
Worse than the dark before.

For what are all our contrivings,
And the wisdom of our books,
Compared with your caresses,
And the gladness of your looks?

Ye are better than all the ballads
That ever were sung or said;
For ye are living poems,
And all the rest are dead.