Performance by: 
Houston Oratorio Society / Ara Carapetyan, conductor
Work commissioned and premiered by:  
Greensboro Choral Society / William Carroll, conductor

Text: Walt Whitman
Photo: Bill Anders, Apollo 8 
________

Passage to India!

O vast Rondure, swimming in space,
Cover’d all over with visible power and beauty,
Passage to India!
Lo, soul, seest thou not God’s purpose from the first?
The earth to be spann’d, connected by network,
The races, neighbors, to marry and be given in marriage, 
The oceans to be cross’d, the distant brought near,
The lands to be welded together.
Passage to India!

Struggles of many a captain, tales of many a sailor dead,
The mediaeval navigators rise before me.
Dominating the rest I see the Admiral himself.
Behold him sail from Palos leading his little fleet,
His voyage behold, his return, his great fame.
Behold his misfortunes, calumniators, 
Behold him a prisoner, chain’d
Behold his dejection, poverty, death.
(Ah Genoese thy dream! thy dream!
Centuries after thou art laid in thy grave,
The shore thou foundest verifies thy dream.)

Passage to more than India!
O thou my soul, voyagest thou indeed on voyages like these?
Are thy wings plumed indeed for such far flights?
Passage to you, to your shores, ye aged fierce enigmas!
Passage to you, to mastership of you, ye strangling problems!
Passage to you, O secrets of the earth and sky!
O sun and moon and all you stars!
Passage to more than India!

O my brave soul!
O farther farther sail!
O daring joy, but safe! are they not all the seas of God?
O farther, farther, farther sail!

________

Photo courtesy of: 
National Aeronautics and Space Administration, USA

Source text: 
Walt Whitman 'Passage to India' from 'Leaves of Grass'
https://www.bartleby.com/142/183.html

The Seas of God

Houston Symphony, Samuel Jones conducting

Elegy was composed in the immediate aftermath of 
the assassination of President Kennedy. Premiered on Dec. 8, 1963 by the Saginaw Symphony, the composer conducting. It has since been performed countless times the world over.

Elegy

Samuel Jones: longtime composer in residence at the Seattle Symphony, founding dean of the Shepherd School of Music at Rice University.

Samuel Jones

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