Fire Sonnets
An a cappella cycle for mixed chorus of sonnets by by English painter and poet Roger Wagner.
Duration: 21'
Difficulty: 4/5 (Difficulty Rating Overview)
As cleansing soap, refining fire (2:14)
I saw the Seraphim one summer’s night (5:17)
Who hears the ocean roaring in a tree (2:37)
There is a fear men flee not from but to (2:41)
A touch of incommunicable pain (3:27)
The voice that spoke before the sun was born (4:12)
Listen on YouTube
As cleansing soap, refining fire
I saw the Seraphim one summer’s night
Who hears the ocean roaring in a tree
There is a fear men flee not from but to
A touch of incommunicable pain
The voice that spoke before the sun was born
-
VOICES
Mixed Chorus (a cappella, divisi, alto solo)
-
TBD
-
Fire Sonnets
by Roger Wagner
I
Then suddenly the Lord you are seeking will come...
But who shall abide the day of his coming?
And who shall stand when he appears? Malachi 3 v2
As cleansing soap, refining fire
Which tender flesh cannot endure
Who burns with his indignant ire
All things that are not wholly pure:
The God into his temple comes
His anger casting out the night
And overturning all our sums
With heaven’s intolerable light.
All fraud before him melts as snow
The smallest fault cannot endure
What can be shaken will be so
By love’s inexorable cure.
Seas cannot quench his love’s desire:
Our God is a consuming fire.
II
The harvest is the end of the world;
and the reapers are angels. Matthew 13 v39
I saw the Seraphim one summer’s night
Reaping it seemed a field of endless wheat.
I heard their voices through the fading light
Wild, strange and yet intolerably sweet.
The hour such beauty first was born on earth
A dawn of sifting had that day begun
For some would not endure love’s second birth
Preferring their own darkness to that sun.
And still love’s sun must rise upon our night
For nothing can be hidden from its heat;
And in that summer evening’s fading light
I saw his angels gather in the wheat:
Like beaten gold their beauty smote the air
And tongues of flame were streaming in their hair.
III
And tongues of flame were streaming in their hair
And flames of fire were dancing in the heat
And through the liquid dancing of that air
I saw the Seraphim bring in the wheat
Yet some have entertained them unaware
And with unearthly guests sat down to eat
And found that meal became itself a prayer
A trysting place where earth and heaven meet.
As in a dream once Jacob saw a stair
With fire-bright angels moving up and down
And dreaming saw the gate of heaven where
The Lord himself stood as that stairway’s crown:
That moves the stars with passionate desire
And makes his angels flames of burning fire.
IV
He makes winds his angels
His servants flames of fire Psalm 104 v4
Who hears the ocean roaring in a tree
That rustles like a thousand angels’ wings
And feels the rising wind he cannot see,
Is seeing to the burning heart of things.
For as a book has pages stamped with ink
While yet some meaning rustles all its leaves,
So all things are as words that forge a link
Between the writer and the one who reads.
And that exulting love which made all things
Whose laughter is the ocean in a tree
That rustles like a thousand angels’ wings
Stirred by a wind no human eye can see,
Breathes love into a world he would inspire
In winds that flame with pentecostal fire.
V
Rejoice with trembling. Psalm 2
There is a fear men flee not from but to
A glory so compelling us to awe
We flee from our own selves and will pursue
A love whose absence no man can endure.
A joy which has some terror in its strength
A fear whose joy the cautions cannot know
As though one rode upon some wave whose length
And height seemed evermore to grow,
Or came upon an ordinary man
And looking for one moment in his eyes
Beheld the one through whom all worlds began
Who formed the stars and made the seas and skies.
Who formed us for himself and draws us near
Into that love which exorcises fear.
VI
In the year that King Uzziah died I saw the Lord Isaiah 6 v2
A touch of incommunicable pain
As though God’s burning kiss had brushed my soul
At once all that I called myself was slain
By love destroyed and then, by love, made whole.
There is no refuge, no dark place to hide,
No hope we can conceal our disgrace:
I lost my self when King Uzziah died
But found my God and saw him face to face,
It was as though the doorposts of my soul
Were shaken like a ship on some great sea
And then he kissed me with a burning coal
My sin was gone and I, at once, was free;
I heard as some unthought, undreamt of dawn
The voice that spoke before the sun was born.
VII
The voice that spoke before the sun was born
That spoke before the morning stars had sung,
The voice that was itself the womb of dawn
Speaks to all things in their own native tongue.
And formed love's language out of all the earth
And wrote love's laws into the heart of man
As signs and preparations for the birth
Of that same love through whom all worlds began.
For as the mind in sympathy may start
To step into the feelings of a friend
And thus by love may enter that friend's heart
So God into man's heart did thus descend.
And as a man was born upon the earth
That we, in him, might know love's painful birth.
Copyright © 1984 & 2019 by Roger Wagner. All rights reserved. Used by permission.
-
Fire Sonnets was recorded in January 2022 for the album J.A.C. Redford: Dappled Things by London Voices directed by Ben Parry.
-
TBD
Purchase Fire Sonnets
Choral Scores:
Order one score per singer plus one for the conductor. Scores are delivered as PDF files. Purchase of choral scores includes permission to make the number of copies ordered.
Pricing:
Choral Score - Complete Cycle - $12.00
As cleansing soap, refining fire - Choral Score - $1.80
I saw the Seraphim one summer’s night - Choral Score - $2.25
Who hears the ocean roaring in a tree - Choral Score - $1.80
There is a fear men flee not from but to - Choral Score - $1.80
A touch of incommunicable pain - Choral Score - $1.80
The voice that spoke before the sun was born - Choral Score - $1.80