The unhurried pace of `When We Dance', the opener to a decade's anthology of Sting's best work, could serve as an icon for the artist's contribution to serious popular music. Pensive, elegant, emotionally resurgent, the song captures the burden of the man's music. Perhaps the highest compliment this reviewer can pay the collection and the reservoir from which it was drawn is just this: unlike the figures in Sting's balladic poetry, the music refuses to grow old.The title track, `Fields of Gold', is another of Sting's story-spinning masterpieces. Elevating his and his lover's bond to mythic levels by contrast to the `jealous sun', Sting writes the poetry of love song better than any of his contemporaries. The musical phrasing plays its role flawlessly as well, brief instrumental interlude occuring at exactly the right moment and without overstaying its welcome.`All This Time' is perhaps the closest thing to a creed that one will find in Sting's repertoire. Brilliantly written, cunningly skeptical, deeply individualist, resonant almost of Emerson, it turns a phrase as well as any. Speaking of two priests who've turned up to administer last rites to a dying man, Sting sees them, unsympathetically, `Fussing and flapping in priestly black // Like a murder of crows'. The entire song deserves quotation:I looked out acrossThe river todayI saw a city in the fog and an old church towerWhere the seagulls playI saw the sad shire horses walking homeIn the sodium lightI saw two priests on the ferryOctober geese on a cold winter's nightAnd all this time, the river flowedEndlessly to the seaTwo priests came round our house tonightOne young, one old, to offer prayers for the dyingTo serve the final riteOne to learn, one to teachWhich was the cold wind blowsFussing and flapping in priestly blackLike a murder of crowsAnd all this time, the river flowedEndlessly to the seaIf I had my way I'd take a boat from the riverAnd I'd bury the old man,I'd bury him at seaBlessed are the poor, for they shall inherit the earthBetter to be poor than a fat man in the eye of a needleAnd as these words were spoken I swore I hearThe old man laughing'What good is a used up world and how could it beWorth having'And all this time the river flowedEndlessly like a silent tearAnd all this time the river flowedFather, if Jesus exists,Then how come he never lived hereThe teachers told us, the Romans built this placeThey built a wall and a temple, an edge of the empireGarrison town,They lived and they died, they prayed to their godsBut the stone gods did not make a soundAnd their empire crumbled, 'til all that was leftWere the stones the workmen foundAnd all this time the river flowedIn the falling light of a northern sunIf I had my way I'd take a boat from the riverMen go crazy in congregationsBut they only get betterOne by oneOne by one...The enigmatic `Be Still, My Beating Heart' brings artistic and emotional discernment to the task of sorting out the opportunity cost of speaking, of understanding, of opening up, of choosing to love or to flee the prospect of being loved.The anthology includes Sting's most potent political statement, one that demonstrates the power of art to change minds. `They Dance Alone' tells the story of bereaved Chilean mothers whose children have been `disappeared' under the Pinochet regime. Weaving the story of these sad-eyed women who `dance alone' because their men have gone into a slow dance suffused with hope transposes Sting's gift for chronicling love and love's loss into a new key.`If I Ever Lose My Faith in You' is Sting's iconic declaration of this love for this woman a thing that eclipses Everything Else. It is vintage Sting, without which no compilation of his work would deserve the name.`Fragile' is an act of the most intelligent brooding. Spare orchestration befits its single, gloomy thought:If blood will flow when flesh and steel are oneDrying in the colour of the evening sunTomorrow's rain will wash the stains awayBut something in our minds will always stayPerhaps this final act was meantTo clinch a lifetime's argumentThat nothing comes from violence and nothing ever couldFor all those born beneath an angry starLest we forget how fragile we areOn and on the rain will fallLike tears from a star like tears from a starOn and on the rain will sayHow fragile we are how fragile we areOn and on the rain will fallLike tears from a star like tears from a starOn and on the rain will sayHow fragile we are how fragile we areHow fragile we are how fragile we areFIELDS OF GOLD reminds Sting fans that it was indeed a remarkable decade. Sting lifted our hearts and filled our minds inimitably or--as the artist himself might have it--in my fashion.