TEXTS & TRANSLATIONS

GEORGE FREDERIC HANDEL (1685-1759)

“Where ‘er you walk” from Semele, HWV 58, Act II, Scene III (1744)

Where’er you walk
Cool gales shall fan the glade
Trees where you sit
shall crowd into a shade

Where’er you tread
The blushing flowers shall rise
And all things flourish
Where’er you turn your eyes

“Và dal furor portata” from Ezio, HWV 29, Act II, Scene IV (1731-1732)

Va! Và, dal furor portata,
Palesa il tradimento;
Mà ti sovvenga, ingrata,
Il traditor qual è.

Scopri la frodi ordita,
ma pensa in quel momento,
ch’io ti donai la vita,
che tu la togli a me.

“Convey me to some peaceful shore” from Alexander Balus, HWV 65, Act III, Scene IV (1747)

Convey me to some peaceful shore,
Where no tumultuous billows roar,
Where life, though joyless, still is calm,
And sweet content is sorrow’s balm.
There free from pomp and care, to wait,
Forgetting, forgetting, and forgot,
The will of fate.

“Waft her, angels” from Jephtha, HWV 70, Act III, Scene I (1751)

Waft her, angels through the skies
Far above yon azure plain, far above yon azure plain

Angels, waft her through the skies,
Far above yon azure plain, far above you azure plain,

Glorious there like you to rise, there like you forever reign.
Forever reign, there like you forever reign

KARIM AL-ZAND (b. 1970)

The Strangers’ Case for Tenor and String Orchestra (2024)

1. We came by steerage on a steamship
in a very dark place that smelt dreadfully.
There were hundreds of other people packed in:
men, women, children, almost all of them sick.
Twelve days to cross the sea.
We thought we should die, but at last the voyage was over,
and we came up and saw the beautiful bay
and the big woman with the spikes on her head
and the lamp that is lighted at night in her hand.
(Lady of the Harbor/Such an Illusion from Lady of the Harbor, The Life Stories ofUndistinguished Americans as Told by Themselves, “A Polish Sweatshop Girl” Sadie Frowne (1906))


We passed close by the grand Statue of Liberty.
Big buildings towering up, like our own mountain peaks—
I was almost prepared to see snow on their tops,
though it was summer time—
outlined in the darkness,
in chains and rows, and circles and ropes of various colored lights:
diamonds and rubies, emeralds, pearls, topazes and all other gems.
Never was there such an illumination!
When we first came we expected to return to Syria.
But we have stayed until we have put out roots.
(Such an Illumination. The Life Stories of Undistinguished Americans as Told by Themselves “A Syrian” (Anonymous?) (1906))

2. Who Can Pity My Lonliness?
Imprisoned in the wooden building day after day,
My freedom withheld; how can I bear to talk about it?
Nights are long and the pillow cold;
who can pity my loneliness?
I came to the United States because I was poor.
How was I to know fate would be so perverse as to imprison me?
The insects chirp outside the four walls.
The inmates often sigh.
Thinking of affairs back home,
Unconscious tears wet my lapel.
(Island of Angels. Anonymous, translated from Chinese Angel Island Detention Center Walls (1920?))

3. Whither Would You Go?

Imagine that you see the wretched strangers,
Their babies at their backs and their poor luggage,
Plodding to the ports and coasts for transportation.
Whither would you go?
You must needs be strangers.
Would you be pleased to find a nation of such barbarous temper,
That would not afford you an abode on earth?
This is the strangers’ case.
[And this your mountainish unhumanity.]
(from Sir Thomas More, William Shakespeare (1601))

4. The Stranger Within My Gate

The stranger within my gate,
He may be true or kind,
But he does not talk my talk—
I cannot feel his mind.
I see the face and the eyes and the mouth,
But not the soul behind.
(The Stranger, Rudyard Kipling (1912))

Wide open and unguarded stand our gates,
And through them a wild throng presses—
Bringing unknown gods and rites,
In street and alley: what loud, accents of menace.
O Liberty, white Goddess! is it well
to leave the gates unguarded?
With hand of steel stay those who pass the sacred portal
to waste the gifts of freedom.
(Unguarded Gates, Thomas Bailey Aldrich (1895))

5. They Came from Terror and Tumult

They came from terror and tumult
fleeing the bombed provinces where only
the death knell tolls—
They came from the confines of a world
lost forever...and lost for nothing!
They carried on horses, on foot,
in carriages of funeral splendor,
or on old fire engines,
everything that is saved
—in that blind moment of anguish—
what was a home, a custom,
a landscape, a time of the soul:|
a portrait of a boy dressed as an admiral,
a magic lantern projector.
(Éxodo, Jaime Torres Bodet (1950) Exile)

6. Exile

My hands have not touched pleasure since your hands,—
No,—nor my lips freed laughter since ‘farewell’,
And with the day, distance again expands
Voiceless between us, as an uncoiled shell.
Yet, love endures, though starving and alone.
A dove’s wings clung about my heart each night
With surging gentleness, and the blue stone
Set in the tryst-ring has but worn more bright.
(Exile, Harold Hart Crane (1926))

7. When Dawn Comes to the City

The tired cars go grumbling by,
The moaning, groaning cars,
And the old milk carts go rumbling by
Under the same dull stars.
Out of the tenements, cold as stone,
Dark figures start for work;
I watch them sadly shuffle on,
’Tis dawn, dawn in New York.

But I would be on the island of the sea,
In the heart of the island of the sea,
Where the cocks are crowing, crowing, crowing,
And the hens are cackling in the rose-apple tree,
Where the old draft-horse is neighing, neighing, neighing,
Out on the brown dew-silvered lawn,
And the tethered cow is lowing, lowing, lowing,
And dear old Ned is braying, braying, braying,
And the shaggy Nannie goat is calling, calling, calling
From her little trampled corner of the long wide lea
That stretches to the waters of the hill-stream falling
Sheer upon the flat rocks joyously!
There, oh, there! on the island of the sea,
There I would be at dawn.
(When Dawn Comes to the City, Claude McKay (1920))

8. The Statue of Liberty, New York Harbor, AD 2900

Here once, the records show, a land with pride
in freedom’s watchword! And once here
The port of traffic for a hemisphere,
With great gold-piling cities at her side,
A sculptured goddess with hospitable smile
And clear torch scanned the isle
For all wild hordes that sought her.
’Twas centuries ago. But this is true:
The tyrant who misrules our land now trembles,
His serfs digging deep in marshes,
Drawing from this swampy bed of ancient sand
A shattered torch in a mighty hand.
(The Statue of Liberty: New York Harbor, A.D. 2900, Arthur Wheelock Upson (1908))

9. These Strangers, in a Foreign World

These strangers, in a foreign world,
Protection asked of me—
Befriend them, lest yourself in heaven
Be found a refugee—
(These Strangers in a Foreign World, Emily Dickinson (1890))