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In the Garden of Delight (2002) SAATB unaccompanied 3'

Text: Judah ibn Tibbon (12th c.)

Commissioned by The Friends of The Saint Paul Public Library for the reopening of the St Paul Central Library.

Premiere—2002, by The Rose Ensemble, Saint Paul, MN.

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Text

My child! I have honored you
by buying you many books.
Make books your companions;
let bookcases and shelves
be your pleasure gardens and orchards.
Bask in their paradise, gather their fruit,
pluck their roses, take their spices and their myrrh.

If your soul be sated and weary,
change from garden to garden,
from furrow to furrow, from sight to sight.
Then will your desire renew itself
and your soul be satisfied with delight.

—Judah Ibn Tibbon (12th c.), translated by Harold Rabinowitz. From A Passion for Books, copyright © 1999 by The Reference Works. Used by permission.