Stars

Program Notes:

Ontario-based composer Rose creates a tone of wonder and awe in his setting of a poem by Canadian poet Marjorie C. Pickthall (1883-1922).

Conductor Notes:

SSAA a cappella. This beautiful piece by Toronto composer and accompanist Rose has become an Elektra favourite. The poem is by Canadian poet Marjorie C. Pickthall (1883-1922).

Text:

Now in the West the slender moon lies low,
And now Orion glimmers through the trees,
Clearing the earth with even pace and slow,
And now the stately-moving Pleiades,
In that soft infinite darkness overhead
Hang jewel-wise upon a silver thread.

And all the lonelier stars that have their place,
Calm lamps within the distant southern sky,
And planet-dust upon the edge of space,
Look down upon the fretful world, and I
Look up to outer vastness unafraid
And see the stars which sang when earth was made.