Strengthen for Service

commissioned by the choir of St Barnabas, Dulwich, London, 1996

sheet music (PDF master score with permission to print or download an authorised number of copies) available via this website: GBP 1.50 per print-out

this work features on the Experience CD - click for details

• Veni creator Spiritus [choir]

Strengthen for service, Lord, the hands
That holy things have taken;
Let ears that now have heard thy songs
To clamour never waken.

Lord, may the tongues which 'Holy' sang
Keep free from all deceiving;
The eyes which saw thy love be bright
Thy blessed hope perceiving.

The feet that tread thy holy courts
From light do thou not banish;
The bodies by thy Body fed
With thy new life replenish.

Syrian, 4th century
possibly Ephraim (c 306-373)
translated by Charles William Humphreys (1840-1921)
and Percy Dearmer (1867-1936)

• choral - mixed voices unaccompanied