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  • Commissioned by Nadia Boulanger to celebrate her 50th year of teaching, "Dirge in Woods" for soprano and piano (in E flat) is a setting of the poem by George Meredith, an English poet and contemporary of Emily Dickinson. The poem uses images of nature as contrasting symbols of life and death.

  • Dirge in Woods

    A wind sways the pines,
    And below
    Not a breath of wild air;
    Still as the mosses that glow
    On the flooring and over the lines
    Of the roots here and there.
    The pine-tree drops its dead;
    They are quiet, as under the sea.
    Overhead, overhead
    Rushes life in a race,
    As the clouds the clouds chase;
    And we go,
    And we drop like the fruits of the tree,
    Even we,
    Even so.

    Author
    George Meredith