Description
Kallman Creates Publications
SSAA, piano. Duration: 2’00”
Listen
Cantala of Lawrence University, Appleton, WI; Phillip Swan conducting.
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Composer’s Notes
The Wonder of It is the second setting in the collection That Life Should Be! (Three Settings of American Women Poets), commissioned in 2011 by a consortium of intermediate and advanced treble choirs across the country. The individual titles are: The Grass So Little Has To Do (text by Emily Dickinson), The Wonder of It (text by Harriet Monroe), and A Birthday (text by Christina Rosetti).
THE WONDER OF IT
by Harriet Monroe (1860-1936)
How wild, how witch-like weird that life should be!
That the insensate rock dared dream of me,
And take to bursting out and burgeoning —
Oh, long ago — yo ho! —
And wearing green! How stark and strange a thing
That life should be!
Oh, mystic mad, a rigadoon of glee,
That dust should rise, and leap alive, and flee
A-foot, a-wing, and shake the deeps with cries —
Oh far away — yo-hay!
What moony masque, what arrogant disguise
That life should be!
