- Duration: 4 minutes
- Soloist(s): Soprano
- Instrumentation: Piano OR Harp OR String Quartet
- Published by: Hawes Music
The eighth piece from the song-cycle The Call written in Autumn 1997 in the aftermath of the death of Princess Diana and uses poems which seemed to echo the public’s need for answers to eternal questions. This piece for soprano and piano is a setting of the beautiful poem by Christina Rossetti describing the sadness and deep pain of the poet for a deceased lover.
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 tho’ 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.
Words: Christina Rossetti (1830-1894)
