The Golden Year - Leslie, Henry David

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◈ Genre / Form Partsongs

♬ Voicing → SATB ¶ Language → English

Parts 4

Instruments A cappella

Pages 12

CPDL # 77142

Editor David Anderson

Posted 2023-11-09

License Personal

¶Lyrics / Text

We sleep and wake and sleep, but all things move; The Sun flies forward to his brother Sun; The dark Earth follows wheel’d in her ellipse; And human things returning on themselves Move onward, leading up the golden year. Ah, tho’ the times, when some new thought can bud, Are but as poets’ seasons when they flower, Yet seas, that daily gain upon the shore, Have ebb and flow conditioning their march, And slow and sure comes up the golden year. When wealth no more shall rest in mounded heaps, But smit with freer light shall slowly melt In many streams to fatten lower lands, And light shall spread, and man be liker man Thro’ all the season of the golden year. Shall eagles not be eagles? wrens be wrens? If all the world were falcons, what of that? The wonder of the eagle were the less, But he not less the eagle. Happy days Roll onward, leading up the golden year. Fly, happy, happy sails fly and bear the Press; Fly happy with the mission of the Cross; Knit land to land, and blowing havenward With silks, and fruits, and spices, clear of toll, Enrich the markets of the golden year. But we grow old. Ah! when shall all men’s good Be each man’s rule, and universal Peace Lie like a shaft of light across the land, And like a lane of beams athwart the sea, Thro’ all the circle of the golden year?

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