If It Be Your Will ( Leonard Cohen )

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Guitar tablature
Concert version from "COHEN LIVE!'", 1992

No capo.

6/8

    C#m                                     A
e-|--------------------------------------|-----------------------------------|
B-|--------------------5-----------------|--------------------5--------------|
G-|--------------6-----------6-----------|--------------6-----------6--------|
D-|--------6-----------------------6-----|--------7-----------------------7--|
A-|--4-----------------------------------|-----------------------------------|
E-|--------------------------------------|--5--------------------------------|

Lyrics

If it be your will
That I speak no more
And my voice be still
As it was before
I will speak no more
I shall abide until
I am spoken for
If it be your will

If it be your will
That a voice be true
From this broken hill
I will sing to you
From this broken hill
All your praises they shall ring
If it be your will
To let me sing

From this broken hill
All your praises they shall ring
If it be your will
To let me sing

If it be your will
If there is a choice
Let the rivers fill
Let your mercy spill
On all these burning hearts in hell
If it be your will
To make us well

And draw us near
And bind us tight
All your children here
In their rags of light
All dressed to kill
And end this night
If it be your will
If it be your will.

Biography :
Prophet of the Heart

The only safe place, the only certain position to take in all this, he says in his last song - which is more a prayer than a song (rather, a psalm) - is in resignation to God: 'If it be your will.' Not that he is preaching, this prophet of the heart. He is but praying - on a world stage! - and believing that the 'intimacy of the conversation' will have some use for the generality of people beyond, of whatever race or creed, in whatever position they may find themselves.
It is a prayer of total resignation: to speak or to be still; to act or to abide; to sing or to praise. In it hope has become faith; despair has turned to optimism; shame replaced by dignity. Personal envy and other considerations have been replaced by a cosmic vision - 'Let the rivers fill/Let the hills rejoice!' And the end? Nothing less than Mercy, for one and all: 'Let your mercy spill ... If it be your will/To make us well.' Also rising from this vast, if shattered love, comes a prayer for conciliation and unity: 'And draw us near/and bind us tight/All your children here/In their rags of light.' The thought, the life, has turned full circle. It began with a call to compare mythologies; it ends with 'a vision of unity' - but always predicated on a spiritual condition, a position of positive surrender:
'And end this night. If it be your will.'

Leonard Cohen's "Prophet of the Heart" biography
Thanks to Adi Heindl for the info.

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