Choose you a night

for SSAATTBB choir unaccompanied

Choose you a night takes its text from The Glugs of Gosh (1917) by Australian poet C. J. Dennis (1876-1938):

Choose you a night when the intimate stars
     Carelessly prattle of cosmic affairs

Heard you no sound like a shuddering sigh?
     Or the great shout of laughter that swept down
            the sky?

Gaze for an hour at that little blue star,
     Giving him, cheerfully, wink for his wink;
Shrink to the size of the being you are;
     Sneeze if you have to, but softly; then think.

Throw wide the portals and let your thoughts run
     Over the earth like a galloping herd.
Bounds to profundity let there be none,
     Let there be nothing too madly absurd.