Sorrow's Tear (Stephen Jenks)

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• (Posted 2016-04-28)  CPDL #39444:       

Editor: Barry Johnston (submitted 2016-04-28).   Score information: Letter, 1 page, 60 kB   Copyright: Public Domain

Edition notes: Oval note edition. Transcribed from The Harmony of Zion, 1818, in four vocal parts, with words by Isaac Watts.

• (Posted 2016-04-28)  CPDL #39443:   

Editor: Barry Johnston (submitted 2016-04-28).   Score information: 7 x 10 inches (landscape), 1 page, 60 kB   Copyright: Public Domain

Edition notes: Note shapes added (4-shape). Transcribed from The Harmony of Zion, 1818, in four vocal parts, with words by Isaac Watts.

General Information

Title: Sorrow's Tear
First Line: Sweet spirit, if thy airy sleep
First line: Death, like an overflowing stream (1818)
Composer: Stephen Jenks
Lyricist: Isaac Watts

Number of voices: 4vv   Voicing: SATB
Genre: Sacred   Meter: 88. 88 (L.M.) Genre: Secular

Language: English
Instruments: A cappella

First published: 1805 in The Delights of Harmony, or Norfolk Compiler, for three voices
Description: Originally published with words by Thomas Moore, entitled On the death of a lady, in four stanzas (two more stanzas appear in Jenks' work in 1805, by an unknown author). Revised by Jenks in The Harmony of Zion, 1818, adding a fourth vocal part, and with words by Isaac Watts, 1719, paraphrase of Psalm 90, the fifth stanza.

External websites:

• Moore, Thomas. 1895. Thomas Moore's Complete Poetical Works, Collected by Himself. Introduction by Nathan H. Dole. New York, New York: T. Y. Crowell. 800 pp.

Original text and translations

Original text and translations may be found at Psalm 90.

English text

On the death of a lady by Thomas Moore
Sweet spirit! if thy airy sleep,
Nor sees my tears, nor hears my sighs,
Then will I weep, in anguish weep,
Till the last heart's drop fills mine eyes.

But if thy sainted soul can feel,
And mingles in our misery;
Then, then my breaking heart I'll seal,
Thou shalt not hear one sigh from me.

The beam of morn was on thy stream,
But sullen clouds the day deform;
Like thee was that young, orient beam,
Like death, alas, that sullen storm!

Thou wert not formed for living here,
So linked thy soul was with the sky;
Yet, ah, we held thee all so dear,
We thought thou wert not formed to die.