Asleep Choral Edition (James Crawford)

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• (Posted 2021-02-07)  CPDL #62714:         

Editor: James Crawford (submitted 2021-02-07).   Score information: A4, 8 pages, 156 kB   Copyright: Personal

Edition notes:

General Information

Title: Asleep Choral Edition
Composer: James Crawford
Lyricist: Wilfred Owen

Number of voices: 4vv   Voicing: SATB
Genre: Secular, Art song

Language: English
Instruments: A cappella

First published: 2021
Description: This choral arrangement is based upon the original solo song and uses the text of the poem by Wilfred Owen.

Original text and translations

English text

ASLEEP - Wilfred Owen

Under his helmet, up against his pack,
After so many days of work and waking,
Sleep took him by the brow and laid him back.

There, in the happy no-time of his sleeping,
Death took him by the heart. There heaved a quaking
Of the aborted life within him leaping,
Then chest and sleepy arms once more fell slack.

And soon the slow, stray blood came creeping
From the intruding lead, like ants on track.

Whether his deeper sleep lie shaded by the shaking
Of great wings, and the thoughts that hung the stars,
High-pillowed on calm pillows of God's making,
Above these clouds, these rains, these sleets of lead,
And these winds' scimitars,
- Or whether yet his thin and sodden head
Confuses more and more with low mould,
His hair being one with the grey grass
Of finished fields, and wire-scrags rusty-old,
Who knows? Who hopes? Who troubles? Let it pass!
He sleeps. He sleeps less tremulous, less cold,
Than we who wake, and waking say Alas!