I Will Keep Still

Winner of the Inaugural Composition Contest for eChoir Dayton - Dr. Drew Collins, Director. Rabindranath Tagore (1861-1941) was a Bengali writer, painter, and musician perhaps best known for his poetry. In 1913, he became the first non-European to win the Nobel Prize for Literature for his work. Gitanjali (Song Offerings), comprises of 103 English poems dealing with a metaphysical nature of union. From this larger work, the text for If thou speakest not (Verse 19) is used as the foundation of this choral work. The imagery highlights the path interior reflection as offering solace to the disquietude of the waiting for a light in the midst of darkness. "If thou speakest not/ I will fill my heart with thy silence/ and endure it./ I will keep still/ and wait like the night/ with starry vigil/ and its head bent low with patience./ The morning will surely come,/ the darkness will vanish,/ and thy voice pour down/ in golden streams/ breaking through the sky./ Then thy words will take wing/ in songs from every one/ of my birds' nests,/ and thy melodies/ will break forth/ in flowers in all/ my forest groves.