Life Time for choir and solo flute or violin, text by William Saroyan from the prologue to the play The Time of Your Life, commissioned for the inauguration of Dan Weiss as President of Haverford College and premiered by the Chamber Singers of Haverford and Bryn Mawr Colleges on October 26, 2013.
William Saroyan (1908-1981)
In the time of your life, live –
so that in that good time there shall be no ugliness or death
for yourself or for any life your life touches.
Seek goodness everywhere,
and when it is found,
bring it out of its hiding-place
and let it be free and unashamed.
Discover in all things that which shines
and is beyond corruption.
Encourage virtue
in whatever heart it may have been driven into secrecy and sorrow
by the shame and terror of the world.
No man’s guilt is not yours,
nor is any man’s innocence a thing apart.
In the time of your life, live –
so that in that wondrous time
you shall not add to the misery and sorrow of the world,
but shall smile to the infinite delight and mystery of it.
Excerpt from William Saroyan's The Time of Your Life © 1939 by William Saroyan.
Used with permission of Stanford University Libraries.