Product Description
This piece is inspired by Dylan Thomas' poem A Refusal to Mourn the Death by Fire of a Child in London. The poem takes place in London during the time of WWII, where a young girl died by fire. Here, the girl has already died and asks the living not to mourn her death as the war continues.
The chordal structure and melodic line, like fire, may take no definite shape. It is short, as fire can burn through a city with great speed and destroy with ease
Thomas' full poem is as follows:
Never until the mankind making
Bird beast and flower
Fathering and all humbling darkness
Tells with silence the last light breaking
And the still hour
Is come of the sea tumbling in harness
And I must enter again the round
Zion of the water bead
And the synagogue of the ear of corn
Shall I let pray the shadow of a sound
Or sow my salt seed
In the least valley of sackcloth to mourn
The majesty and burning of the childs death.
I shall not murder
The mankind of her going with a grave truth
Nor blaspheme down the stations of the breath
With any further
Elegy of innocence and youth.
Deep with the first dead lies Londons daughter,
Robed in the long friends,
The grains beyond age, the dark veins of her mother,
Secret by the unmourning water
Of the riding Thames.
After the first death, there is no other.
This product was created by a member of ArrangeMe, Hal Leonard's global self-publishing community of independent composers, arrangers, and songwriters. ArrangeMe allows for the publication of unique arrangements of both popular titles and original compositions from a wide variety of voices and backgrounds.