Singing Place, The

Captures the rapture the poet feels as she is carried away on rhythmic and floating "waves of sound" — a sensation of being both in time and out of time.
Item Voicing Duration
S-305 SSAA 6:30
$3.20 Purchase at earthsongs

Lily Long's poem describes that place that some call "between worlds"—between conscious and subconscious awareness. Long calls it "The Singing Place."  "The Singing Place" was the second work commissioned  by the ACDA Women's Choir Composition Consortium. (2007-2008).It is a show piece for the advanced treble ensemble.

Women & Trebles
Difficulty
Moderate
Advanced

The Singing Place

Lily A. Long (1860-1927)

Cold may lie the day,
And bare of grace;
At night I slip away
To the Singing Place.

A border of mist and doubt
Before the gate,
And the Dancing Stars grow still
As hushed I wait.
Then faint and far away
I catch the beat
In broken rhythm and rhyme
Of joyous feet,-

Lifting waves of sound
That will rise and swell
(If the prying eyes of thought
Break not the spell),
Rise and swell and retreat
And fall and flee,
As over the edge of sleep
They beckon me.

And I wait as the seaweed waits
For the lifting tide;
To ask would be to awake,-
To be denied.

I cloud my eyes in the mist
That veils the hem,-
And then with a rush I am past,--
I am Theirs, and of Them!

And the pulsing chant swells up
To touch the sky,
And the song is joy, is life,
And the song am I!

Over the edge of sleep
I bring but a trace
Of the chants that pulse and sweep
In the Singing Place.