# The Better Land

- Music: Frederic Hymen Cowen (died 1935)
- Words: Felicia Dorothea Hemans (died 1835)
- Licence of the score: CC0 1.0
- Credit: OpenScore Lieder Corpus (CC0)
- Source: https://musescore.com/openscore-lieder-corpus/scores/6484095

## The words

I hear thee speak of the Better Land,  
Thou call’st its children a happy band,  
Mother, where is that radiant shore?  
Shall we not seek it, Shall we not seek it,  
and weep no more? Is it where the flow’r of the  
orange blows, And the fireflies dance thro’  
the myrtle boughs?  
Not there, not there, my child.  
Is it far away, in some region old,  
Where the rivers wander o’er sands of gold,  
Where the burning rays of the ruby shine,  
And the diamond lights up, the diamond lights  
up the secret mine, And the pearl gleams forth  
from the coral strand Is it there,  
sweet mother, that Better Land?  
Is it there, sweet mother, that Better Land?  
Not there, not there, my child.  
Eye hath not seen it, my gentle boy,  
Ear hath not heard its deep songs of joy;  
Dreams cannot picture a world so fair.  
Sorrow and death, sorrow and death may not  
enter there; Time doth not breathe on its  
fadeless bloom, on its fadeless bloom,  
Far beyond, beyond the clouds, Far beyond,  
beyond the tomb, Far beyond the clouds,  
and beyond the tomb, It is there,  
it is there, my child! it is there,  
’tis there!  

Songs to sing here are made from public-domain scores: the OpenScore Lieder Corpus (CC0), the Mutopia Project (each score's licence as Mutopia states it) and the scores in Japanese Wikipedia's articles (CC BY-SA 4.0, by each article's contributors); dates and first publications as IMSLP, the LiederNet Archive, Mutopia and Wikidata state them. Karaoke videos play in YouTube's player; live channels from the iptv-org database on their own pages; stations from Radio Browser. The piano is the Salamander Grand Piano by Alexander Holm (CC BY 3.0).