Come to me in the silence of the night;
Come in the speaking silence of a dream;
Come with soft rounded cheeks and eyes as bright
As sunlight on a stream;
Come back in tears,
O memory, hope, love of finished years.

Oh dream how sweet, too sweet, too bitter sweet,
Whose wakening should have been in Paradise,
Where souls brimfull of love abide and meet;
Where thirsting longing eyes
Watch the slow door
That opening, letting in, lets out no more.

Yet come to me in dreams, that I may live
My very life again though cold in death:
Come back to me in dreams, that I may give
Pulse for pulse, breath for breath:
Speak low, lean low,
As long ago, my love, how long ago!

"Je cherche un peu partout
Dans l’espoir de trouver
Quelqu’un qui connaît bien la mer et son halein’ salée
Qui pourrait bien me dire
Pour quoi j’ai dans la peau
Le bruit des vagues sur la plage
Le chant liquide et pur de l’eau.

Parlez-moi de la mer
Racontez moi son histoire
Dites-moi, parlez-moi
Pour que je sois marin pour que je sois marin Parlez-moi de la mer."

excerpt from Parlez-Moi by France Levasseur-Ouimet arr. Allan Bevan
© Cypress Choral Music 2012

Marie Stultz of Spectrum Music, in Lexington, MA wrote this about Parlez-Moi in the Winter 2012-13 Choral Room:


Parlez-moi, by France Lavasseur-Ouimet, arr. Allan Bevan, French text, Cypress, CP 1217, SSA & piano. Difficulty rating 3-4. $2.25
Text Source: France Levasseur-Ouimet
Period and Nationality: 21st C. French Canadian
Style: Part-Song
Special Music Characteristics: This charming melody and text by Lavasseur-Ouimet resembles a folk song. Bevan has arranged the melody in two and three parts over a florid piano accompaniment in the key of D Major. A good introduction to French diction, the subtle dynamics will develop the choir's artistry. The piece concludes on a dramatic double forte on a unison d2 that will ring through the room.

There, in that other world what waits for me?
What shall I find after that other birth?
No stormy, tossing, foaming, smiling sea,
But a new earth.

No sun to mark the changing of the days,
No slow, soft falling of the alternate night,
No moon, no star, no light upon my ways,
Only the light.

No gray cathedral, wide and wondrous fair,
That I may tread where all my fathers trod.
Nay, nay, my soul, no house of God is there,
But only God.

                                               Mary Coleridge

Full fathom five thy father lies,
Of his bones are coral made,
Those are pearls that were his eyes:
Nothing of him that doth fade
But doth suffer a sea-change
Into something rich and strange.
Sea-nymphs hourly ring his knell.
Hark! now I hear them: ding, dong, bell.

Ave Maria, gratia plena, Dominus tecum.
Benedicta tu in mulieribus,
et benedictus fructus ventris tui, Iesus.
Sancta Maria, Mater Dei,
ora pro nobis peccatoribus,
nunc et in hora mortis nostrae. Amen.

Hail Mary, full of grace, the Lord is with thee.
Blessed art thou among women,
and blessed is the fruit of thy womb, Jesus.
Holy Mary, Mother of God,
pray for us sinners,
now and in the hour of our death. Amen.

"Allan Bevan is an extremely talented composer of ravishing sacred choral music in a traditional style. This Ave Maria won first prize in the equal voices category of the 1999-2000 Association of Canadian Choral Conductors Associated Publishers Composition Competition, and if your choir can’t sing it you should hire two good sopranos to perform it just so your congregation can hear something as beautiful as this. The two soloists rest after the first eight measures while the two-part trebles continue. Then the soloists sing to the end, and the “choir” only joins with them to provide harmony for the last three measures. The piece could be sung by a two-part choir or just two soloists. This is beyond recommended".  

Deep River,
My home is over Jordan.
Deep River, Lord.
I want to cross over into campground.


Oh, don't You want to go,
To the Gospel feast;
That Promised Land,
Where all is peace?

Oh, Deep River, Lord,
I want to cross over into campground.

O Danny Boy, the pipes, the pipes are calling,
From glen to glen and down the mountain side.
The summer's gone and all the roses falling,
Its you, its you must go and I must bide.

But come ye back, when summers in the meadow,
Or when the valleys hushed and white with snow,
It's I'll be here in sunshine or in shadow,
O Danny boy, O Danny boy, I love you so.

But when ye come and all the flowers are dying,
And I am dead as dead I well may be.
Ye'll come and find the place where I am lying.
And kneel and say an 'Ave' there for me.

And I shall hear though soft you tread above me,
For all my grave will warmer sweeter be.
For you will bend and tell me that you love me,
And I shall sleep in peace until you come to me.

O holy virgin! clad in purest white,
Unlock heav'n's golden gates, and issue forth:

Awake the dawn that sleeps in heav'n: let light
Rise from the chambers of the east, and bring
The honied dew that cometh on waking day.

O radiant morning, salute the sun,
Rouz'd like a huntsman to the chase, and with
Thy buskin'd feet, appear upon our hills.

     William Blake, from Poetical Sketches, 1783

"Blake's poem O Holy Virgin receives a powerful setting by Canadian composer Allan Bevan. In the predominantly secular text, the poet bids the holy virgin to invoke dawn. A rich harmonic palette accompanies potent textual images. A slow, steady pulse and sustained, ascending vocal lines create the character of a solemn procession. Ranges and tessituras are comfortable with the exception of an optional b flat 2. The two primary voices occasionally cross and frequently sing at the interval of a second, requiring independence on the part of the singers. With a key signature of E flat minor, tenths in the right hand, and duple versus triple rhythms, the piano part is out of the reach of most student players. A worthy text and beautiful setting make this piece appropriate for any treble chorus."

Harp of wild and dreamlike strain,
When I touch thy strings,
Why dost thou repeat again
Long-forgotten things?

Harp, in other earlier days,
I could sing to thee;
And not one of all my lays
Vexed my memory.

But now, if I awake a note
That gave me joy before,
Sounds of sorrow from thee float,
Changing evermore.

Yet, still steeped in memory's dyes,
They come sailing on,
Darkening all my summer skies,
Shutting out my sun.

                                                   -Emily Jane Bronte

Gentle Mary laid her child
Lowly in a manger;
There he lay, the undefiled,
To the world a stranger,
Such a babe in such a place,
Can he be the Saviour?
Ask the saved of all the race
Who have found his favour.

Angels sang about his birth,
Wise men sought and found him;
Heaven's star shone brightly forth,
Glory all around him.
Shepherds saw the wondrous sight,
Heard the angels singing;
All the plains were lit that night,
All the hills were ringing.

Gentle Mary laid her child
Lowly in a manger,
He is still the undefiled,
But no more a stranger.
Son of God of humble birth,
Beautiful the story;
Praise his name in all the earth,
Hail the King of Glory.

Singers to come, what thoughts will start
To song? What words of yours be sent
Through man's soul, and with earth be blent?
These worlds of nature and the heart
Await you like an instrument.

Who knows what musical flocks of words
Upon these pine-tree tops will light,
And crown these towers in circling flight,
And cross these seas like summer birds,
And give a voice to the day and night?

Something of you already is ours;
Some mystic part of you belongs
To us whose dreams your future throngs,
Who look on hills, and trees, and flowers,
Which will mean so much in your songs.

from A Poet's Fancies IX

My heart shall be thy garden.
Come, my own,
   Into thy garden; thine be happy hours
   Among my fairest thoughts, my tallest flowers,
From root to crowning petal thine alone.

Thine is the place from where the seeds are sown
   Up to the sky enclosed, with all its showers.
   But ah, the birds, the birds! Who shall build bowers
To keep these thine? O friend, the birds have flown.

For as these come and go, and quit our pine
   To follow the sweet season, or, new-comers,
      Sing one song only from our alder-trees,

My heart has thoughts, which, though thine eyes hold mine,
   Flit to the silent world and other summers,
      With wings that dip beyond the silver seas.