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Petite Voices Online

Petite Voices Online

Our Junior School choir, Petite Voices, treated us to an online rendition of our School Song, in a performance that brought a tear to the eye of many.

The melody of the song was written by our Senior School teacher and Liturgist, Mrs Gina Marshall, who composed it originally for a Loreto Kirribilli staff day many years ago. To her delight and surprise, it was embraced by the Junior School.

The words of the song originate from an 1893 copy of the school newsletter, Eucalyptus Blossoms, when Mother Gonzaga included them at the end of her Mother’s Letter to her Children. She did not say where she found the poem, only that “…some time ago whilst reading, I met lines that I thought suitable to you, my dear children, but, as I cannot find them now, I must quote from memory:

"I live for those who love me,
For those who love me true.
For the Heaven that shines above me,
For the aim that I pursue;
For the cause that lacks assistance,
For the wrong that needs resistance,
For the future in the distance,
And the good that I can do.”

The opening lines vary slightly from the poem What I Live For, originally penned by George Linnaeus Banks (1821-1881), British journalist, author, playwright and poet, and husband of author Isabella Banks. The final stanza of his poem reads “I live for those who love me, whose hearts are kind and true, for heaven that smiles above me, and waits my spirit too.” Mother Gonzaga extemporised, and possibly improved upon, the original and sent it to her ‘children’ as inspiration - inspiration that lives on more than a century later. 

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