Futility (James Crawford)
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- Editor: James Crawford (submitted 2020-01-02). Score information: A4, 4 pages, 81 kB Copyright: CC BY NC ND
- Edition notes:
General Information
Title: Futility
Composer: James Crawford
Lyricist: Wilfred Owen
Number of voices: 1v Voicing: S
Genre: Secular, Art song
Language: English
Instruments: Piano
First published: 2020
Description: Futility is the seventh and last of a collection of songs based upon the poems of Wilfred Owen. It is not intended that this collection should be sung as a cycle. It may serve as part of a Remembrance Day event, or recital, or as a competition piece.
External websites:
Original text and translations
English text
Move him into the sun -
Gently its touch awoke him once,
At home, whispering of fields half-sown.
Always it woke him, even in France,
Until this morning and this snow.
If anything might rouse him now
The kind old sun will know.
Think how it wakes the seeds -
Woke once the clays of a cold star.
Are limbs, so dear achieved, are sides
Full-nerved, still warm, too hard to stir?
Was it for this the clay grew tall?
- Oh what made fatuous sunbeams toil
To break earth's sleep at all?