Poem by Charles Kingsley, text edited by Frank DiGiacomo. Photography by Rick Powers.

This song, along with Peace and Song on a Poem by Alfred, Lord Tennyson, was written for and dedicated to Ms. Patti Thompson using texts of her own choosing. The poems chosen and the extraordinary abilities of Ms. Thompson as an artist provided the composer with several ideas he later put to use in his dramatic oratorio The Trojan Women, in which the role of Helen of Troy was written expressly for her.

The live performance of A Farewell is by Patti Thompson, accompanied by Frank DiGiacomo, at the recital An Evening of Song by Frank DiGiacomo, Friday May 18, 1979 at the Carrier Theater of the Mulroy Civic Center, in Syracuse, New York.

LYRICS
My fairest child, I have no song to give you;
no lark could pipe to skies so dull and gray:          
Yet, ere we part, one lesson I can leave you for ev’ry day.
I’ll teach you how to sing a clearer carol than lark’s who hails the dawn o’er breezy down,
to earn yourself a purer poet’s laurel than Shakespeare’s crown.
Be good, sweet child, and let who can be clever, do noble things, not dream them, all day long:
and so make life, death, and that vast forever one grand sweet song,
and so make life, death, and that vast forever one grand sweet song.

from Beautiful Gems of Thought and Sentiment, compiled by Henry Davenport Northrop,
American Publishing Co., Cleveland Ohio, 1890.