Sleeping Out: Full Moon

SATB and Piano

I love this text because each line is a microcosm of hazy, nuanced language that results in a series of dramatic images. It was a dream to write music to because Brooke imbued everything with such a great sense of forward motion and sweeping gestures. I imagine that, had he survived World War I past the age of 28, he would have become a literary giant. Winston Churchill himself wrote the obituary:

“…this life has closed at the moment when it seemed to have reached its springtime. A voice had become audible, a note had been struck, more true, more thrilling, more able to do justice to the nobility of our youth in arms engaged in this present war, than any other more able to express their thoughts of self-surrender, and with a power to carry comfort to those who watch them so intently from afar. The voice has been swiftly stilled. Only the echoes and the memory remain; but they will linger.”

“…joyous, fearless, versatile, deeply instructed, with classic symmetry of mind and body, ruled by high undoubting purpose, he was all that one would wish England’s noblest sons to be in the days when no sacrifice but the most precious is acceptable, and the most precious is that which is most freely proffered.”

—excerpts from Churchill’s obituary note for Brooke in theTimes, April 26, 1915

The Text

By Rupert Brooke (1887-1915)

They sleep within...
I cower to the earth, I waking, I only.
High and cold thou dreamest, O queen, high dreaming and lonely.

We have slept too long, who can hardly win
The white one flame, and the night long crying;
The viewless passers; the world’s low sighing
With desire, with yearning,
To the fire unburning,
To the heatless fire, to the flameless ecstasy!...

Helpless I lie.
And around me the feet of thy watchers tread.
There is a rumour and a radiance of wings above my head,
An intolerable radiance of wings...

All the earth grows fire,
White lips of desire
Brushing cool on the forehead, croon slumbrous things.
Earth fades; and the air is filled with ways,
Dewy paths full of comfort.  And radiant bands,
The gracious presence of friendly hands,
Help the blind one, the glad one, who stumbles and strays,
Stretching wavering hands, up, up, through the praise
Of a myriad of silver trumpets, through cries,
To all the glory, to all gladness, to the infinite height,
To the gracious, the unmoving, the mother eyes,
And the laughter, and the lips, of light.

Performed by the Young New Yorkers’ Chorus
(Michael Kerschner, conductor).