Download Chris Thile’s Song of the Week for December 14, 2019: “Letters”
The band: Chris Thile, Sarah Jarosz, Mike Elizondo, Eric Doob, Chris Eldridge, Alex Hargreaves, Brett Williams
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Lyrics:
TELEGRAPH OPERATORS (Chris)
Sleep my child and peace attend thee
All through the night
Guardian angels God will lend thee
All through the night
Soft the drowsy hours are creeping
Hill and vale in slumber steeping
I my loving vigil keeping
All through the night
Though I roam a minstrel lonely
All through the night
My true harp shall praise sing only
All through the night...
LINCOLN (Sarah)
My dear Sir and Madam
In the loss of your noble son
My affliction here
is scarcely less than your own
Our acquaintance began less than two years ago
Yet I can proudly say we knew each other well
And that the honors he labored for so laudably, and, in the sad end, so gallantly gave his life for, he meant for you, no less than for himself.
May God give you that consolation which is beyond all earthly power
Yours in our common affliction...
TELEGRAPH OPERATORS (Chris)
Love's young dream, alas, is over
Yet my strains of love shall hover
Near the presence of my lover
All through the night...
LINCOLN:
Dear Mrs. Ainesworth
I’ve been informed by an adjutant general
That your noble husband
Has died on the field of battle
I feel how weak and fruitless must be any words of mine
As sorrow threatens to blot out the sun
And blind you to what might yet be won
Let the memory of the brave man you loved remind you
Remind you
How much the prize of freedom is worth
How great the role is of death in rebirth
And such peace as there exists on this earth
Will find you find you find you
TELEGRAPH OPERATORS (Sarah)
Love to thee my thoughts are turning
All through the night
All for thee my heart is yearning
All through the night
LINCOLN (Chris)
Dear Fanny I am deeply saddened
To hear of the death your father
Sadder still to think of the pain
Your young heart is being made to suffer...
Dear George I too was a child when I lost my first parent
Dear Sir as you know I’m a parent whose buried his child
So I know what I say when I say that
As sorrow threatens to blot out the sun
And blinds you to what might yet be won
Let the memory of your father, husband, son remind you
Remind you
How much the prize of freedom is worth
How great the role is of death in rebirth
And such peace as there exists on this earth
Will find you find you find you
TELEGRAPH OPERATORS (Sarah, then Sarah and Chris):
Though sad fate our lives may sever
Parting will not last forever
There’s a hope that leaves me never
All through the night