Description:

Text: Edwin Morgan
Duration: c. 6′
Male Choir
First performance Estonia Symphony Hall, Tallinn April 6
Estonian National Male Choir, conductor Kaspars Putnins

Date:

January 1, 2006

Gavin’s Notes:

Text of Silva Caledonia

The darkness deepens, and the woods are long.

We shall never see any stars. We thought

we heard a horn a while back, faintly brought

through barks and howls, the nearest to a song

you ever heard in these grey dripping glens.

But if there were hunters, we saw not one.

Are there bears? Mist. Wolves? Peat. Is there a sun?

Where are the eyes that should peer from those dens?

Marsh-lights, yes, mushroom-banks, leaf-mould, rank ferns,

and up above, a sense of wings, of flight,

of clattering, of calls through fog. Yet men,

going about invisible concerns,

are here, and our immoderate delight

waits to see them, and hear them speak, again.

Text: Edwin Morgan