Download Chris Thile’s Song of the Week for December 14, 2019: “Letters”

The band: Chris Thile, Sarah Jarosz, Mike Elizondo, Eric Doob, Chris Eldridge, Alex Hargreaves, Brett Williams

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Lyrics:

TELEGRAPH OPERATORS (Chris)

Sleep my child and peace attend thee

All through the night

Guardian angels God will lend thee

All through the night

Soft the drowsy hours are creeping

Hill and vale in slumber steeping

I my loving vigil keeping

All through the night

Though I roam a minstrel lonely

All through the night

My true harp shall praise sing only

All through the night...

LINCOLN (Sarah)

My dear Sir and Madam

In the loss of your noble son

My affliction here

is scarcely less than your own

Our acquaintance began less than two years ago

Yet I can proudly say we knew each other well

And that the honors he labored for so laudably, and, in the sad end, so gallantly gave his life for, he meant for you, no less than for himself.

May God give you that consolation which is beyond all earthly power

Yours in our common affliction...

TELEGRAPH OPERATORS (Chris)

Love's young dream, alas, is over

Yet my strains of love shall hover

Near the presence of my lover

All through the night...

LINCOLN:

Dear Mrs. Ainesworth

I’ve been informed by an adjutant general

That your noble husband

Has died on the field of battle

I feel how weak and fruitless must be any words of mine

As sorrow threatens to blot out the sun

And blind you to what might yet be won

Let the memory of the brave man you loved remind you

Remind you

How much the prize of freedom is worth

How great the role is of death in rebirth

And such peace as there exists on this earth

Will find you find you find you

TELEGRAPH OPERATORS (Sarah)

Love to thee my thoughts are turning

All through the night

All for thee my heart is yearning

All through the night

LINCOLN (Chris)

Dear Fanny I am deeply saddened

To hear of the death your father

Sadder still to think of the pain

Your young heart is being made to suffer...

Dear George I too was a child when I lost my first parent

Dear Sir as you know I’m a parent whose buried his child

So I know what I say when I say that

As sorrow threatens to blot out the sun

And blinds you to what might yet be won

Let the memory of your father, husband, son remind you

Remind you

How much the prize of freedom is worth

How great the role is of death in rebirth

And such peace as there exists on this earth

Will find you find you find you

TELEGRAPH OPERATORS (Sarah, then Sarah and Chris):

Though sad fate our lives may sever

Parting will not last forever

There’s a hope that leaves me never

All through the night