The Cross of snow (Tim Risher)

Music files

L E G E N D

Disclaimer

How to download

ICON	SOURCE
	Pdf
	Midi
	File details
	Help

• (Posted 2010-05-20)  CPDL #21638:     

Editor: Tim Risher (submitted 2010-05-20).   Score information: Letter, 10 pages, 304 kB   Copyright: CC BY ND

Edition notes: Includes a keyboard reduction of the a cappella choral score.

General Information

Title: The Cross of Snow
Composer: Tim Risher
Lyricist: Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, 1879

Number of voices: 4vv   Voicing: SATB
Genre: Secular, Madrigal

Language: English
Instruments: A cappella

First published:
Description: A slow piece based on a poem of the same name by Longfellow. Written for a smaller choir, maximum 2 per part.

Original text and translations

English text

In the long, sleepless watches of the night,
A gentle face--the face of one long dead--
Looks at me from the wall, where round its head
The night-lamp casts a halo of pale light.
Here in this room she died; and soul more white
Never through martyrdom of fire was led
To its repose; nor can in books be read
The legend of a life more benedight.
There is a mountain in the distant West
That, sun-defying, in its deep ravines
Displays a cross of snow upon its side.
Such is the cross I wear upon my breast
These eighteen years, through all the changing scenes
And seasons, changeless since the day she died.