- With a Glorious Eye (2001) SATB, unaccompanied 3'
- Premiere—Westminster Cathedral Choir, Saint Paul, MN 11/06
Program Note
I became acquainted with John Clare's work through writing Heard in a Violent Ward, a song cycle based on his poems and letters. Clare (1793-1864) achieved early fame in 1820 through his Poems Descriptive of Rural Life and Scenery, but spent his last thirty years in an asylum, suffering from what we would now call acute bi-polar disorder.
Clare's poem invites the listener to contemplate the divine grandeur and the nature of the inspiration through the sun's brilliance. With a Glorious Eye is dedicated to my friends George and Frances Reid of Minneapolis. At Philip Brunelle's suggestion, it was premiered in Saint Paul, Minnesota by the Westminster Cathedral Choir of London on their American tour in 2006.
Text
God looks on nature with a glorious eye
And blesses all creation with the sun
Its drapery of green and brown earth ocean lie
in morning as creation just begun
That saffron east fortells the rising sun
And who can look upon that majesty
Of light brightness and splendour nor feel won
With love of him whose bright all seeing eye
Feeds the days light with Immortality.