Sung by Ann Mackay (soprano)
Accompanied by Jack Gibbons (piano)
Recorded by Tony Faulkner
at Henry Wood Hall, London
November 17th 2003
Music copyright Jack Gibbons 2001
Performance copyright Jack Gibbons 2003 picture right: Ann Mackay
Jack Gibbons' song Echo
is a setting of the poem of Christina Rossetti, the 19th century poet and sister of
Pre-Raphaelite painter Dante Gabriel Rossetti.Jack
Gibbons' song setting was completed in the early summer of 2001.
Echo
words by Christina Rossetti
Come to me in the silence of night;
Come in the speaking silence of a dream;
Come with soft rounded cheeks and eyes as bright
As sunlight on a stream;
Come back in tears,
O memory, hope, love of finished years.
Oh dream how sweet, too sweet, too bitter-sweet,
Whose awakening should have been in Paradise,
Where souls brim-full of love abide and meet;
Where thirsting longing eyes
Watch the slow door
That opening, letting in, lets out no more.
Yet come to me in dreams, that I may live
My very life again though cold in death:
Come back to me in dreams, that I may give
Pulse for pulse, breath for breath:
Christina Rossetti
Speak low, lean low,
As long ago, my love, how long ago.
Come to me in the silence of night;