From our May 2019 concert "Across the Millennia"
Composed by Ola Gjeilo
Text by Walt Whitman
Song of the Universal (excerpts)
Come, said the Muse,
Sing me a song no pet yet has chanted,
Sing me the Universal.
In this broad Earth of ours,
Amid the measureless grossness and the slag,
Enclosed and safe within its central heart,
Nestles the seed Perfection.
By every life a share, or more or less,
None born but it is born -- conceal'd or unconceal'd,
the seed is waiting.
Give me, O God, to sing that thought!
Give me -- give him or her I love, this quenchless faith
In Thy ensemble.
Whatever else withheld, withhold not from us,
Belief in plan of Thee enclosed in Time and Space;
Health, peace, salvation universal.
All, all for Immortality!
Love, like the light, silently wrapping all!
nature's amelioration blessing all!
The blossoms, fruit of ages -- orchards divine and certain;
Forms, objects, growths, humanities, to spiritual Images ripening.
-Walt Whitman