Reconciliation

"Reconciliation" is the fourth song in Ned Rorem's song cycle Five Poems of Walt Whitman.

Date: 1970Composer: Ned RoremText: Walt WhitmanSong Collection: Five Poems of Walt Whitman

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Text

Reconciliation
by Walt Whitman

Word over all, beautiful as the sky,
Beautiful that war and all its deeds of carnage must in time be utterly lost,
That the hands of the sisters Death and Night incessantly softly wash again,
and ever again, this soil’d world;
For my enemy is dead, a man divine as myself is dead,
I look where he lies white-faced and still in the coffin–I draw near,
Bend down and touch lightly with my lips the white face in the coffin.

Sheet Music

Five Poems of Walt Whitman

Composer(s): Ned Rorem

Song(s): 1. Sometimes With One I Love
2. Look Down, Fair Moon
3. Gliding O'er All
4. Reconciliation
5. Gods

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