Whispered and Revealed, by Nico Muhly

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Performed by the Grinnell Singers, John Rommereim, conductor, Marlys Grimm, keyboard. Used by permission of the composer. Text by Henry Longfellow:

Out of the bosom of the air,
Out of the cloudfolds of her garments shaken,
Over the woodlands, brown and bare,
Over the harvest fields forsaken,
Silent and soft and slow
Descends the snow.

Even as our cloudy fancies take
Suddenly shape in some divine expression,
Even as the troubled heart doth make
in the white countenance confession,
The troubled sky reveals
The grief it feels.

This is the poem of the air,
Slowly, in silent syllables recorded;
This is the secret of despair,
long in its cloudy bosom hoarded,
Now whispered and revealed
To wood and field.