on a poem by William Blake, text edited by Frank DiGiacomo.

Resulting from a commission by New York artist Betty Tompkins in January of 1976, the Blake song was presented as a birthday gift to Mr. William Mutter and first performed on October 5, 1976 by Christine Klemperer with the Composer at the piano, at a program given at the old Corinthian Club in Syracuse, New York. The text is drawn from the closing portion of the Blake work.

The live recording is the second performance, by Christine Klemperer, accompanied by Frank DiGiacomo, at An Evening of New Music by Frank DiGiacomo, May 18, 1977 at the Carrier Theater of the Mulroy Civic Center, Syracuse, New York.

William Blake’s illustration for his book in verse, Visions of the Daughters of Albion, a mystical exploration of the disenfranchisement of women and the inequalities of marriage in the late 18th century. Oöthoön loves Theotormon, the chaste, yet falsely righteous man, but she is brutally raped by the lustful Bromion, after which neither man wants her.

LYRICS
Does the sun walk in glorious raiment,
on the secret floor where the cold miser spreads his gold?
Or does the bright cloud drop on his stone threshold?
Does his eye behold the beam that brings expansion to the eye of pity,
or will he bind himself beside the ox to thy hard furrow?
Does not that mild beam blot the bat,
the owl, the glowing tiger and the king of night?
The seafowl takes the wint’ry blast
for a cov’ring to her limbs:
and the wild snake the pestilence to adorn him with gold and gems
and trees and birds and beasts and men behold their eternal joy.
Arise you little glancing wings and sing your infant joy!
Arise and drink your bliss, for ev’rything that lives is holy,
for ev’rything that lives is holy!
Thus ev’ry morning wails Oöthoön but Theotormon
sits upon the margined oceans conversing with shadows dire.
The daughters of Albion hear her woes and echo back her sighs.