What are years - for unaccompanied choir (SATB) text by Marianne Moore (BMC 1909), commissioned for the inauguration of Kim Cassidy as President of Haverford College and premiered by the Chamber Singers of Haverford and Bryn Mawr Colleges on September 20, 2014.

What are years

What are years?
What is our innocence,
what is our guilt? All are
naked, none is safe. And whence
is courage: the unanswered question,
the resolute doubt --
dumbly calling, deafly listening -- that
in misfortune, even death,
encourages others
and in its defeat, stirs

   the soul to be strong? He
sees deep and is glad, who
   accedes to mortality
and in his imprisonment rises
upon himself as
the sea in a chasm, struggling to be
free and unable to be,
   in its surrendering
   finds its continuing.

So he who strongly feels,
behaves. The very bird,
grown taller as he sings, steels
his form straight up. Though he is captive,
his mighty singing
says, satisfaction is a lowly
thing, how pure a thing is joy.
This is mortality,
this is eternity.

-- Marianne Moore (1941)