When I was working on this new composition, my wife asked me, “What’s it about?”

“Death,” I said.

“Ah, another commercial success in the making,” she replied.

Well, this song isn’t exactly about death. It’s about mortality and hope. I don’t know where the path leads after death. But I do know the One who walks with us on that path. And therefore I know that, as Julian of Norwich wrote, all shall be well, and all shall be well, and all manner of thing shall be well.

This is a four-part choral piece; the video below shows a socially-distanced quartet performing it, consisting of myself, my wife Kelly, and my daughter Fern, with my friend Ron singing and conducting. The music, as it moves from lamentation to hope, changes in melody, key, and time signature; the final melody is a traditional Welsh tune, Bugeilio’r Gwenith Gwyn.

The words are below. Sheet music is, as always, available in our Free Stuff area.





The mainspring wound at birth is bound
 In time to be unwinding.
 The candle flame that binds my name
 Burns down to my unbinding.
 In joy I sang; the heavens rang
 With all my fiery yearning.
 But now I see that I must be
 Too soon to dust returning. 

 The mortal path on which I walk
 Is one of certain sorrow.
 It ends before a silent door,
 A day with no tomorrow.
 Yet even so, one thing I know:
 Your love has always found me.
 All shall be well, all shall be well,
 For you are all around me.

 Love will be sustaining me
 On hilltop and in hollow,
 In sun or rain, in joy or pain,
 Whatever path I follow.
 I shall not fear though death be near,
 I shall not break though bending.
 You love me still, and still you will,
 Beyond this journey’s ending.