The Centennial Meditation of Columbia. 1776-1876. A Cantata.

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Title:     The Centennial Meditation of Columbia. 1776-1876. A Cantata.
Author: Sidney Lanier [More Titles by Lanier]

[Musical Annotations, in angled brackets, precede each section.]

From this hundred-terraced height,
Sight more large with nobler light
Ranges down yon towering years.
Humbler smiles and lordlier tears
Shine and fall, shine and fall,
While old voices rise and call
Yonder where the to-and-fro
Weltering of my Long-Ago
Moves about the moveless base
Far below my resting-place.

Mayflower, Mayflower, slowly hither flying,
Trembling westward o'er yon balking sea,
Hearts within `Farewell dear England' sighing,
Winds without `But dear in vain' replying,
Gray-lipp'd waves about thee shouted, crying
"No! It shall not be!"

Jamestown, out of thee --
Plymouth, thee -- thee, Albany --
Winter cries, `Ye freeze:' away!
Fever cries, `Ye burn:' away!
Hunger cries, `Ye starve:' away!
Vengeance cries, `Your graves shall stay!'

but worked up with greater fury, to the climax of the shout
at the last line.>

Then old Shapes and Masks of Things,
Framed like Faiths or clothed like Kings
Ghosts of Goods once fleshed and fair,
Grown foul Bads in alien air --
War, and his most noisy lords,
Tongued with lithe and poisoned swords --
Error, Terror, Rage and Crime,
All in a windy night of time
Cried to me from land and sea,
`No! Thou shalt not be!'

Hark!
Huguenots whispering `yea' in the dark,
Puritans answering `yea' in the dark!
`Yea' like an arrow shot true to his mark,
Darts through the tyrannous heart of Denial.
Patience and Labor and solemn-souled Trial,
Foiled, still beginning,
Soiled, but not sinning,
Toil through the stertorous death of the Night,
Toil when wild brother-wars new-dark the Light,
Toil, and forgive, and kiss o'er, and replight.

introduces a tone of doubt: it then sinks to `pianissimo'.>

Now Praise to God's oft-granted grace,
Now Praise to Man's undaunted face,
Despite the land, despite the sea,
I was: I am: and I shall be --
How long, Good Angel, O how long?
Sing me from Heaven a man's own song!

"Long as thine Art shall love true love,
Long as thy Science truth shall know,
Long as thine Eagle harms no Dove,
Long as thy Law by law shall grow,
Long as thy God is God above,
Thy brother every man below,
So long, dear Land of all my love,
Thy name shall shine, thy fame shall glow!"

O Music, from this height of time my Word unfold:
In thy large signals all men's hearts Man's heart behold:
Mid-heaven unroll thy chords as friendly flags unfurled,
And wave the world's best lover's welcome to the world.

Note to the Cantata.

The annotated musical directions which here accompany `The Cantata', arranged for the composer's use, were first sent with the newly-completed text in a private letter to Mr. Gibson Peacock, of Philadelphia.

I am enabled to give these annotations and the author's own introduction to his work through the kindness of Mr. Peacock: the friend who, while yet an entire stranger, awakened and led the public recognition of Mr. Lanier's place in the world of art. M. D. L.

"Baltimore, January 18, 1876.

" . . . The enclosed will show you partly what I have been doing. . . . The Centennial Commission has invited me to write a poem which shall serve as the text for a Cantata (the music to be by Dudley Buck, of New York), to be sung at the opening of the Exhibition, under Thomas' direction. . . . I've written the enclosed. Necessarily I had to think out the musical conceptions as well as the poem, and I have briefly indicated these along the margin of each movement. I have tried to make the whole as simple and as candid as a melody of Beethoven's: at the same time expressing the largest ideas possible, and expressing them in such a way as could not be offensive to any modern soul. I particularly hope you'll like the Angel's song, where I have endeavored to convey, in one line each, the philosophies of Art, of Science, of Power, of Government, of Faith, and of Social Life. Of course I shall not expect that this will instantly appeal to tastes peppered and salted by [certain of our contemporary writers]; but one cannot forget Beethoven, and somehow all my inspiration came in these large and artless forms, in simple Saxon words, in unpretentious and purely intellectual conceptions, while nevertheless I felt, all through, the necessity of making a genuine song -- and not a rhymed set of good adages -- out of it. I adopted the trochees of the first movement because they COMPEL a measured, sober, and meditative movement of the mind; and because, too, they are not the genius of our language. When the troubles cease, and the land emerges as a distinct unity, then I fall into our native iambics. . . ."

"Baltimore, January 25, 1876.

"My Dear Friend: -- Your praise, and your wife's, give me a world of comfort. I really do not believe anything was ever written under an equal number of limitations; and when I first came to know all the conditions of the poem I was for a moment inclined to think that no genuine work could be produced under them.

"As for the friend who was the cause of the compliment, it was, directly, Mr. Taylor. . . . INDIRECTLY, YOU are largely concerned in it. . . . I fancy [all] this must have been owing much to the reputation which you set a-rolling so recently. . . .

"So, God bless you both.

"Your friend, S. L."

-THE END-
Sidney Lanier's poem: The Centennial Meditation of Columbia. 1776-1876. A Cantata.

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