The Send Off, The End - Rawson, Jeremy

♪

"A setting of two poems by Wilfred Owen, composed to commemorate the 100th anniversary of the end of the First World War. The link on this page is to the vocal score which has just piano accompaniment. For the version with accompaniment by piano and string quartet, please visit the composer's website (see link below)."

⌛ Period → 20th Century ◈ Genre → Other ♬ Voicing → SATB|SATB and Soprano solo ¶ Language → English

Parts 4

Instruments Piano, or piano and string quartet

Pages 14

CPDL # 49064

Editor Jeremy Rawson

Posted 2018-03-16

License Personal

¶Lyrics / Text

(Dulce et decorum est, Pro patria mori) (The old lie…) Down the close, darkening lanes they sang their way To the siding shed And lined the train with faces grimly gay Their breasts were stuck all white with wreath and spray As men's are, dead. Dull porters watched them, and a casual tramp Stood staring hard Sorry to miss them from the upland camp Then, unmoved, signals nodded and a lamp Winked to the guard. So secretly, like wrongs hushed up, They went, they were not ours. We never heard to which front these were sent Nor there if they yet mock what women meant Who gave them flowers Shall they return to beatings of great bells In wild train loads? A few, too few, may creep back silent to still village wells Up half known roads. After the blast of lightning from the east The flourish of loud clouds, the chariot throne, After the drums of time have rolled and ceased And from the bronze west long retreat is blown, Shall life renew these bodies? Of a truth All death will he annul, all tears assuage? Of fill these void veins full again with youth And wash with an immortal water, age? When I do ask White Age, he saith not so, "My head hangs weighed with snow" And when I hearken to the earth, she saith "My fiery heart sinks aching, it is death. Mine ancient scars shall not be glorified Nor my titanic tears the seas be dried."