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Op.34
O may I join the choir invisible

This work was composed in 1910 for the choir of Girton College, Cambridge.

About this work

Cyril Bradley Rootham (CBR) composed this work in 1910 as his Op.34, using the first stanza of a poem written by George Eliot (a.k.a. Mary Ann Evans).

Op.34 is written for soprano solo, soprano and alto chorus, and accompaniment of organ (or piano).

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Publication status

The sheet music is available from CBR's original publishers Stainer and Bell as
43407: O may I join the choir invisible.

"O may I join the choir invisible"

George Eliot

    O may I join the choir invisible
  Of those immortal dead who live again
  In minds made better by their presence: live
  In pulses stirred to generosity,
  In deeds of daring rectitude, in scorn
  For miserable aims that end with self,
  In thoughts sublime that pierce the night like stars,
  And with their mild persistence urge man's search
  To vaster issues.

      So to live is heaven:
  To make undying music in the world
  Breathing as beauteous order that controls
  With growing sway the growing life of man.
  So we inherit that sweet purity
  For which we struggled, failed, and agonised
  With widening retrospect that bred despair.
  Rebellious flesh that would not be subdued,
  A vicious parent shaming still its child
  Poor anxious penitence, is quick dissolved;
  Its discords, quenched by meeting harmonies,
  Die in the large and charitable air.
  And all our rarer, better, truer self,
  That sobbed religiously in yearning song,
  That watched to ease the burthen of the world,
  Laboriously tracing what must be,
  And what may yet be better— saw within
  A worthier image for the sanctuary,
  And shaped it forth before the multitude
  Divinely human, raising worship so
  To higher reference more mixed with love—
  That better self shall live till human Time
  Shall fold its eyelids, and the human sky
  Be gathered like a scroll within the tomb
  Unread for ever.

    This is life to come,
  Which martyred men have made more glorious
  For us who strive to follow. May I reach
  That purest heaven, be to other souls
  The cup of strength in some great agony,
  Enkindle generous ardour, feed pure love,
  Beget the smiles that have no cruelty—
  Be the sweet presence of a good diffused,
  And in diffusion ever more intense.
  So shall I join the choir invisible
  Whose music is the gladness of the world.

  (1867)

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