Faith

"Faith" is the ninth song of David Leisner's song cycle Confiding, which sets the poetry of women poets.

This cycle is available in versions for high voice and piano, medium voice and piano, and high voice and guitar.

The audio selection in the player to the right features Sanford Sylvan, baritone, and Patricia Thom, piano. The recording is from the live premiere performance in Boston, 1987 (unrevised piano version). Used with the permission of the composer.

Date: 1986Composer: David LeisnerText: Emily BrontëSong Collection: Confiding

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Text

Faith
by Emily Brontë

No coward soul is mine
No trembler in the world’s storm-troubled sphere
I see Heaven’s glories shine
And Faith shines equal arming me from Fear

O God within my breast
Almighty ever-present Deity
Life, that in me hast rest
As I Undying Life, have power in Thee

Vain are the thousand creeds
That move men’s hearts, unutterably vain,
Worthless as withered weeds
Or idlest froth amid the boundless main

To waken doubt in one
Holding so fast by thy infinity
So surely anchored on
The steadfast rock of Immortality

With wide-embracing love
Thy spirit animates eternal years
Pervades and broods above,
Changes, sustains, dissolves, creates and rears

Though Earth and moon were gone
And suns and universes ceased to be
And thou wert left alone
Every Existence would exist in thee

There is not room for Death
Nor atom that his might could render void
Since thou art Being and Breath
And what thou art may never be destroyed.

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