Texts and translations
Shantaleela Namostute
Text: Curtis Andrews
Maa Saraswathi Namostute,
Namo Deviyai, Maha Deviyai, Namo
Shantaleela Namostute,
Namo Nama, Namo Nama, Nama
Mother Saraswati I bow to you.
Salutations to the Goddess, the great Goddess,
Salutations.
Shantaleela I bow to you.
Salutations and salutations
Where Endless Ages Roll
Text: Anonymous, from The Sacred Harp, 266 (“Kingwood”)
My days, my weeks, my months, my years,
Fly rapid as the whirling spheres,
Around the steady pole;
Time, like the tide, its motion keeps,
And I must launch thro’ endless deeps,
Where endless ages roll.
The grave is near the cradle seen,
How swift the moments pass between!
And whisper as they fly,
Unthinking man, remember this,
Though fond of sublunary bliss,
That you must groan and die.
My soul, attend the solemn call,
Thine earthly tent must shortly fall,
And thou must take thy flight
Beyond the vast expansive blue,
To sing above, as angels do,
Or sink in endless night.
The Range of Light
Text: John Muir, from “The Yosemite”
Looking eastward from the summit of Pacheco Pass one shining morning, a landscape was displayed that after all my wanderings still appears as the most beautiful I have ever beheld. At my feet lay the Great Central Valley of California, level and flowery, like a lake of pure sunshine, forty or fifty miles wide, five hundred miles long, one rich furred garden of yellow Compositae.
And from the eastern boundary of this vast golden flower-bed rose the mighty Sierra, miles in height, and so gloriously colored and so radiant, it seemed not clothed with light but wholly composed of it, like the wall of some celestial city.... Then it seemed to me that the Sierra should be called, not the Nevada or Snowy Range, but the Range of Light.
And after ten years of wandering and wondering in the heart of it, rejoicing in its glorious floods of light, the white beams of the morning streaming through the passes, the noonday radiance on the crystal rocks, the flush of the alpenglow, and the irised spray of countless waterfalls, it still seems above all others the Range of Light.