On Christmas night I heard that cry (Huub de Lange)
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- (Posted 2015-09-22) CPDL #36734:
- Editor: Huub de Lange (submitted 2015-09-22). Score information: A4, 10 pages Copyright: Personal
- Edition notes: The MP3 files are a synthesized realisation of the music.
General Information
Title: On Christmas night I heard that cry
Composer: Huub de Lange
Lyricist: Alice V. Stuart
Number of voices: 4vv Voicing: SATB
Genre: Sacred, Carol
Language: English
Instruments: A cappella
First published: 2015
Description: Number 3 of Christmas Songs. For more choral settings by Huub de Lange of poems by Alice V. Stuart see Four Stuart Songs and The Voice.
External websites:
Original text and translations
English text
On Christmas night I heard that cry
that pierces women’s heart too nigh,
the cry of a new-born child,
the reluctant spirit, trapped as man
thrust in a world that thwarts God’s plan,
wailing, unreconciled.
Methought the thin and mounting woe
pierced to those stars that earth below
watch in their silent scorn.
Was it the child of holy birth
or all the babes o’er all the earth
that sorrowed being born?
O world, two thousand years have flown
since first, divinely, to His own
came the child avatar
what of the golden age, God given,
heralded by the hosts of heaven
‘neath that earthstooping star?
Alas! the millennial tale of wrong still,
still belies the angel song
and life gainsays goodwill.
The tender soul endues is flesh
in an alien world, and dies afresh
our frustrate savior still.
When shall that generation rise
potent to pattern on the skies
this earthly fief of God,
and mothers no more weep to see
their babes’ incarnate innocency
martyred in flesh and blood.
On Christmas night I heard that cry
that pierces women’s heart too nigh,
an infant’s wail forlorn.
Was it the Child of holy birth
or all the babes o’er all the earth
that sorrowed, being born?