Philip Henderson

Tonight In The Spindrift Snow

A wonderful new setting by Philip Henderson for unaccompanied mixed voice choir of a poem by Patrick Gordon-Duff-Pennington.
The sample recording here is an actual performance by The Clothworkers Consort of Leeds, not a computer-generated one!

Tonight in the spindrift snow
Spare a thought for the birds and the beasts in the fields.
Think, as you sit in the warmth of your room of the fear in glittering eyes of the sparrows -
As they perch in the creeper watching the pencils of light through the curtain chinks.
Cruel wind ruffles the down of the doves in the spruces,
Of the hares in their forms, facing the merciless night after the merciless day of starvation.
Spare a thought, spare a thought for the stirring life in the womb of the starving hind
In the drifts and the wind, in the rocks of the eagles.
You who are kind, will have heard the wind's whisper,
'Have pity, have pity, on the birds and the beasts,
Spare a thought, spare a prayer for their night in the snow'.

Text © Patrick Gordon-Duff-Pennington. Used by permission.

Duration 4 minutes