Sure On This Shining Night

It has been a long week, with many thoughts about death, life, and everything in between. Our Sunday tradition is to listen to chorale and choir music (the Morten Lauridsen station on Pandora is a favorite). This song came on while I was on my walk, “Sure On This Shining Night,” and even though I was walking in the morning, it seemed like a perfect soundtrack for this week. The song is adapted from a poem written in 1934 by James Agee. The poem is written “...from the perspective of an older man walking outside...reflecting on his life.” Here is the poem:

Sure on this shining night
of starmade shadows round
kindness must watch for me
this side the ground.

The late year lies down the north,
all is healed, all is health.
High summer holds the earth
hearts all whole.

Sure on this shining night
I weep for wonder
wandering far alone
of shadows on the stars.

And here is the song: https://youtu.be/H9RuWqpOH0Q