Echo

Scored for tenor, violin, viola, cello, piano and synthesizer.
Words by Christina Rossetti      Music by Jerry Gerber      Tenor, Dale Tracy

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 brimful 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.
 
Play
from the album "In Praise of Poets", 2003