A dark, dramatic meditation on regret, tension, and a life squandered. This piece carries immense emotional intensity, using striking harmonic shifts and a brooding piano part to build a sense of deep longing. It provides an exceptional opportunity for your choir to showcase dramatic restraint, vocal color variation, and high-stakes storytelling.
The beautiful and haunting poem Fire and Sleet and Candlelight by poet Elinor Wylie (1885-1928 laments a wasted life. This piece is reminiscent of the choral standards “Sometimes I Feel Like a Motherless Child” and “Wayfaring Stranger,” evoking what I can hope are similar thrilling feelings of angst and terror for singer, conductor, and listener.
Demo vocals by Hector Munoz’ chamber choir via fiverr.com.
Fire and Sleet
For this you’ve striven
Daring, to fail:
Your sky is riven
Like a tearing veil.
For this, you’ve wasted
Wings of your youth;
Divined, and tasted
Bitter springs of truth.
From sand unslakèd
Twisted strong cords,
And wandered naked
Among trysted swords.
There’s a word unspoken,
A knot untied.
Whatever is broken
The earth may hide.
The road was jagged
Over sharp stones:
Your body’s too ragged
To cover your bones.
The wind scatters
Tears upon dust;
Your soul’s in tatters
Where the spears thrust.
Your race is ended—
See, it is run:
Nothing is mended
Under the sun.
Straight as an arrow
You fall to a sleep
Not too narrow
And not too deep.