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Breath'd back, again was written for my friend, Benjamin Brecher, and recorded as a companion piece for song cycles by Benjamin Britten and Hector Berlioz, all of which use text by the Irish poet, Thomas Moore. I spent hours going through poems by Thomas Moore trying to pick the exactly right text, but upon thinking about the theme of the album, I decided to instead take one word or phrase from every poem used in Britten and Berlioz's songs, extract and then reorder them, and to create an entirely new poem of my own. This gave me a more personal and modern take on Moore's poetry, and one that helped me reflect on art's ability to influence and inspire us over centuries.

Text:
Here bring your wounded hearts,
here tell your anguish.

Our halls shall be mute
Through endless space—through calm
breath'd back again.
At least, I fly.
far beyond the cold chain of silence
of other days.

Soon,
together
the line of light—burning west
looking back on the scene...
bright—Oh yes!

—Sarah Gibson, with selections of text from the poems of Thomas Moore