Description
This is an instrumental transcription of Parry’s 7 voice anthem from his “Songs of Farewell”.
The poem for the original anthem is one of John Donne’s Holy Sonnets:
At the round earth’s imagined corners, blow
Your trumpets, angels, and arise, arise
From death, you numberless infinities
Of souls, and to your scattered bodies go;
All whom the flood did, and fire shall o’erthrow,
All whom war, dearth, age, agues, tyrannies,
Despair, law, chance hath slain, and you, whose eyes
Shall behold God, and never taste death’s woe.
But let them sleep, Lord, and me mourn a space;
For if above all these my sins abound
’Tis late to ask abundance of Thy grace
When we are there. Here on this lowly ground,
Teach me how to repent, for that’s as good
As if Thou hadst seal’d my pardon with Thy blood.