SATB and piano/organ.

Duration: 3mins 45s.

The Wise Men comes from a set of three carols, settings of poems by G.K. Chesterton.

G.K.C. was a great traveller and on his wanderings a friend to everyone he met. In his own house, he was famed for his warmth and hospitality. It is not surprising, then that The Inn was for him almost a spiritual symbol. In all of my settings of his poems I have tried to convey the sense of a yearning journey of life coupled with the joy of finding something thought lost forever: we travel to a place that, if we are truthful, we never really left.

In The Wise Men I hoped to put over the idea of something lost but very close, and the steady, measured pace of the approach to the stable at Bethlehem.

Step softly, under snow or rain,
    To find the place where men can pray;
The way is all so very plain
    That we may lose the way.

Oh, we have learnt to peer and pore
    On tortured puzzles from our youth,
We know all the labyrinthine lore,
We are the three wise men of yore,
    And we know all things but truth.

Go humbly ... it has hailed and snowed...
    With voices low and lanterns lit;
So very simple is the road,
    That we may stray from it.

The world grows terrible and white,
    And blinding white the breaking day;
We walk bewildered in the light,
For something is too large for sight,
    And something much too plain to say.

The Child that was ere worlds begun
    (... We need but walk a little way,
We need but see a latch undone...)
The Child that played with moon and sun
    Is playing with a little hay.