“I shot an arrow into the air…”
This setting of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow’s 1845 poem on the theme of enduring friendship, The Arrow and the Song, was commissioned by the composer’s dear friend Mary Ittelson in 2016. The poem is beloved by adults and children alike, and Ittelson requested that the song be dedicated to her “friends and their friends.”
The Arrow and the Song by H.W. Longfellow
I shot an arrow into the air,
It fell to earth, I knew not where;
For, so swiftly it flew, the sight
Could not follow it in its flight.
I breathed a song into the air,
It fell to earth, I knew not where;
For who has sight so keen and strong,
That it can follow the flight of song?
Long, long afterward, in an oak
I found the arrow, still unbroke;
And the song, from beginning to end,
I found again in the heart of a friend.
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