When I am laid in Earth is a transcription of the famous aria known as 'Dido's Lament' from Henry Purcell's opera Dido and Aeneas. The aria comes at the climax of the work when the dying Dido, deserted and heartbroken, bewails her bitter fate to her ever-faithful companion, Belinda. In a brilliant stroke of genius, Purcell suggests the inevitability of fate by constructing the lament as a series of variations over a chromatically descending ground bass which repeats inexorably throughout the piece.