Reconciliation (Whitman, set by N. Rorem, R. Vaughan Williams) (The Lied and Art Song Texts Page: Texts and Translations to Lieder, mélodies, canzoni, and other classical vocal music)


Word over all, beautiful as the sky,
Beautiful that war and all its deeds of carnage must in time be utterly lost,
That the hands of the sisters Death and Night incessantly softly wash again,
and ever again, this soil'd world;
For my enemy is dead, a man divine as myself is dead,
I look where he lies white-faced and still in the coffin--I draw near,
Bend down and touch lightly with my lips the white face in the coffin.

Authorship

Walt Whitman (1819-1892)

Musical settings (art songs, Lieder, mélodies, (etc.), choral pieces, and other vocal works set to this text), listed by composer (not necessarily exhaustive)

Ned Rorem (1923-)

Five Poems of Walt Whitman

Ralph Vaughan Williams (1872-1958)

Dona nobis pacem

Added to the website between May 1995 and September 2003.

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