There Is A Fountain

Chris Rice delivers a spare, hymn-like reading of a text built entirely around one central image: a fountain whose water is blood, drawn from Emmanuel's veins. The song lingers on the paradox that a flood meant for cleansing is made of the very wounds that supply it, and that anyone who goes under it comes up without their guilty stains. The repeated lines function like a refrain of assurance, turning the same phrase over until it settles into the listener's ear as a settled fact rather than a plea. The second stanza shifts to personal testimony, tracing the moment faith first caught sight of that stream and naming redeeming love as the theme that will occupy the singer until death. The third looks past death itself, imagining a tongue that now stammers and lisps falling silent in the grave only to be replaced by a nobler, sweeter song about the power that saves. Rice's quiet, unhurried delivery keeps the focus on the words rather than the performance, letting the old imagery do its work without embellishment. The closing return to the opening lines gives the whole piece a circular shape, ending where it began.