Clear Evening

“Clear evening” is movement two in the nine-movement a cappella work “Stars forever, while we sleep” and whose text is principally taken from Sara Teasdale’s late work, Dark of the Moon. This poem explores the Sara Teasdale’s autumnal mood as she gazes into a summer’s eve filled with fireflies and the scents of apple, dewy pine, and rose. The evocative atmosphere takes the chorus and audience through night-time moods and emotions that finally resolve in spoken words “fall asleep, fall asleep” as this quiet reflective work concludes.

Clear evening
By Sara Teasdale

The crescent moon is large enough to linger
A little while after the twilight goes,
This moist midsummer night the garden perfumes
Are earth and apple, dewy pine and rose.

Over my head four new-cut stars are glinting
And the inevitable night draws on;
I am alone, the old terror takes me,
Evenings will come like this when I am gone;

Evenings on evenings, years on years forever–
Be taut, my spirit, close upon and keep
The scent, the brooding chill, the gliding firefly,
A poem learned before I fall asleep.