A Child of the Snows (Jennifer Bastable)

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• (Posted 2025-09-25)  CPDL #86877:       

Editor: Jennifer Bastable (submitted 2025-09-25).   Score information: Letter, 9 pages, 460 kB   Copyright: Personal

Edition notes:

General Information

Title: A Child of the Snows
Composer: Jennifer Bastable
Lyricist: G. K. Chesterton
Number of voices: 5vv   Voicing: SMzATB
Genre: Secular, Carol

Language: English
Instruments: A cappella

First published:
Description: An extended setting of Chesterton’s poem, for five voices.

Original text and translations

English text

There is heard a hymn when the panes are dim,
And never before or again,
When the nights are strong with a darkness long,
And the dark is alive with rain.

Never we know but in sleet and in snow,
The place where the great fires are,
That the midst of the earth is a raging mirth
And the heart of the earth a star.

And at night we win to the ancient inn
Where the child in the frost is furled,
We follow the feet where all souls meet
At the inn at the end of the world.

The gods lie dead where the leaves lie red,
For the flame of the sun is flown,
The gods lie cold where the leaves lie gold,
And a Child comes forth alone.