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Console​-​toi. La mort donne la vie.

from La Com​é​die de la Mort (2021) for tenor and piano by Thomas Oboe Lee

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lyrics

LE VER.
Console-toi.—La mort donne la vie.—Eclose
A l'ombre d'une croix l'églantine est plus rose
        Et le gazon plus vert.
La racine des fleurs plongera sous tes côtes;
A la place où tu dors les herbes seront hautes;
        Aux mains de Dieu tout sert!
Un mort qu'ils réveillaient les pria de se taire;
Un pâle éclair parti non du ciel mais de terre
        Me fit dans leurs tombeaux
Voir tous les trépassés cadavres ou squelettes,
Avec leurs os jaunis ou leurs chairs violettes,
        S'en allant par lambeaux;
Les jeunes et les vieux, peuple du cimetière,
Pauvres morts oubliés n'entendant sur leur pierre
        Gémir que l'ouragan,
Et dévorés d'ennui dans leur froide demeure,
De leurs yeux sans regard cherchant à savoir l'heure
        A l'éternel cadran.
Puis tout devint obscur, et je repris ma route,
Pâle d'avoir tant vu, plein d'horreur et de doute,
        L'esprit et le corps las;
Et me suivant partout, mille cloches fêlées,
Comme des voix de mort me jetaient par volées
        Les râlements du glas.

The worm:
Be now consoled, for Death gives Life. Upspringing under the shadow of the cross the eglantine more rosy is, more green the sward. The flower’s roots within thy frame shall plunge, and where thou sleepest, tall shall wave the grass; for in God’s hands is nothing lost.

One of the dead their speech had wakened for silence called. Lightning, not from heaven, but from earth, showed me within their tombs all the dead; skeletons of bodies with yellowed bones, or purplish flesh in tatters falling away.

Both young and old the graveyard’s inhabitants, poor forgotten dead, hearing upon their tombs but the roar of the gale, and to weariness a prey within their dwelling cold, sought with sightless eyes to read the hour upon Eternity’s mighty dial.

Then all to darkness turned, and on my way I went, pale at having seen so much; with doubt and horror filled, weary in mind and body both. And, ever following me, countless cracked bells like the voices of the dead swung out to me the moans they tolled.

credits

from La Com​é​die de la Mort (2021) for tenor and piano, released May 30, 2021

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Thomas Oboe Lee Cambridge, Massachusetts

Thomas Oboe Lee was born in China in 1945. He lived in São Paulo, Brazil, for six years before coming to the United States in 1966. After graduating from the University of Pittsburgh, he studied composition at the New England Conservatory and Harvard University. He has been a member of the music faculty at Boston College since 1990. ... more

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