Instrumentation: SATB & Orchestra
Purchase: Contact composer directly
Duration: 6:30
Language: English
Story:  I've always been drawn to the words of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow.  This poem speaks to the prime transcendentalist belief - beauty, truth, and wisdom can be found in nature if only you're quiet enough to receive it.  This work originally appeared as Sanctus: My Cathedral in the larger Mass on American Poets.

Like two cathedral towers these stately pines
Uplift their fretted summits tipped with cones;
The arch beneath them is not built with stones,
Not Art but Nature traced those lovely lines,
And carved this graceful arabesque of vines;
No organ but the wind here sighs and moans,
No sepulchre conceals a martyr’s bones,
No marble bishop on his tomb reclines.
Enter! the pavement, carpeted with leaves,
Gives back a softened echo to thy tread!
Listen! the choir is singing; all the birds,
In leafy galleries beneath the eaves,
Are singing! listen, ere the sound be fled,
And learn there may be worship without words.
- Henry Wadsworth Longfellow