Poems inviting song - click title to see words in individual track 'Descriptions'. Reading the words while hearing the tune gives the best experience.

Song & Poem mix  (*see tracks for words)

William Blake is unique in writing poems with a song and painting to go with them. He sang his poems unaccompanied, and printed and published his work.

His melodies are lost, so far - though some were written down. I hope you find mine add to your experience of his poems.

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(Click on the song title to read the words while you listen.)

William Blake poems in song                                     (more to come)

A halloween love story read by Chris Roberts from his book 'Bus Travel in South London - stories from the city over the water' https://soundcloud.com/chris-roberts-737799 

Each story happens on a London bus route, except perhaps this one, 'Sung by the Neck'. This links to the River Neckinger where it joins The Thames, and 17th century pirates were hung by the 'devil's neck-cloth'.

The melodies are written on a South London bus, reading the story on my way to work.

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(From the album, click on the song titles to read Chris' words as you listen.)

Oh Shad Thames - a halloween love story in South London

The words are most important and evoke the melody. Together they fly.
Click on the title to read the words as the song plays - it opens in a new page.

Great Poems in Song

To Mercy, Pity, Peace, and Love 
All pray in their distress; 
And to these virtues of delight 
Return their thankfulness.

For Mercy, Pity, Peace, and Love 
Is God, our father dear, 
And Mercy, Pity, Peace, and Love 
Is Man, his child and care.

For Mercy has a human heart, 
Pity a human face, 
And Love, the human form divine, 
And Peace, the human dress.

Then every man, of every clime, 
That prays in his distress, 
Prays to the human form divine, 
Love, Mercy, Pity, Peace.

And all must love the human form, 
In heathen, Turk, or Jew; 
Where Mercy, Love, and Pity dwell 
There God is dwelling too. 
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My melody to Blake's poem 
- he wrote and sang his own, but no trace remains
Studioct26 1

The Divine Image --- by William Blake (poem in song)

We could gather round and dance
Chestnut tree, Chestnut tree
We could gather round and sing
Every Sunday morning

We could gather round and dance
Chestnut tree, Chestnut tree
We could gather round and sing
Every Sunday morning

What a beautiful (tree you are)
Chestnut tree, Chestnut tree
What a beauty you can be
Every Sunday morning.

We can gather round and dance
Chestnut tree, Chestnut tree
We can gather round and sing
Every Sunday morning
 
There would we together bring
Chestnut tree, Chestnut tree
There we could for ever sing
On a Sunday morning

Now I see a squirrel sit
By your tree, Chestnut tree
Now I see the squirrel sit
Nibbling on a twig of thine.

Maybe there will come a day
Chestnut tree, Chestnut tree
When sorrows fly away
On a Sunday morning.

Song to a Chestnut Tree

"Summer is coming, summer is coming.
I know it, I know it, I know it.
Light again, leaf again, life again, love again,"
Yes, my wild little Poet.

Sing the new year in under the blue.
Last year you sang it as gladly.
"New, new, new, new!" Is it then so new
That you should carol so madly?

"Love again, song again, nest again, young again,"
Never a prophet so crazy!
And hardly a daisy as yet, little friend,
See, there is hardly a daisy.

"Here again, here, here, here, happy year!"
O warble unchidden, unbidden!
Summer is coming, is coming, my dear,
And all the winters are hidden. 

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My melody to Tennyson's words
Studio Aug6 X6
Written and recorded in studio. When I got in, my book - A Poem for Every Day of the Year, edited by Allie Esirii - fell open on this page and I began singing.
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Tennyson's poem is a dialogue between poet and 'wild little poet', the Throstle, though that name is never mentioned - and I never heard it before. The bird's words are in quotation marks and use repetition. The words really run together in an exhilarating way. 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Song_thrush
The song thrush (Turdus philomelos) has brown upper-parts and black-spotted cream or buff underparts... Its distinctive song, which has repeated musical phrases, has frequently been referred to in poetry...

The song thrush breeds in forests, gardens and parks, and is partially migratory with many birds wintering in southern Europe, North Africa and the Middle East;…

Turdus philomelos. The generic name, Turdus, is the Latin for thrush, and the specific epithet refers to a character in Greek mythology, Philomela, who had her tongue cut out, but was changed into a singing bird. Her name is derived from the Ancient Greek Φιλο philo- (loving), and μέλος melos (song). The dialect names throstle and mavis both mean thrush, being related to the German drossel and French mauvis respectively. Throstle dates back to at least the fourteenth century and was used by Chaucer in the Parliament of Fowls.

The song thrush has a short, sharp tsip call, replaced on migration by a thin high seep, similar to the redwing's call but shorter. The alarm call is a chook-chook becoming shorter and more strident with increasing danger. The male's song, given from trees, rooftops or other elevated perches, is a loud clear run of musical phrases, repeated two to four times, filip filip filip codidio codidio quitquiquit tittit tittit tereret tereret tereret, and interspersed with grating notes and mimicry. … An individual male may have a repertoire of more than 100 phrases, many copied from its parents and neighbouring birds...

The song thrush's characteristic song, with melodic phrases repeated twice or more, is described by the nineteenth-century British poet Robert Browning in his poem Home Thoughts, from Abroad:

That's the wise thrush; he sings each song twice over, 
Lest you should think he never could recapture  
The first fine careless rapture!

https://soundcloud.com/user-734457954/home-thoughts-from-abroad-in-song-robert-browning?in=user-734457954/sets/the-great-poems-in-song

https://soundcloud.com/user-734457954/home-thoughts-from-abroad-2-robert-browning-in-song

The Throstle - Alfred Lord Tennyson (in song)

Bring me all of your dreams,  
You dreamers. 
 Bring me all of your 
 Heart melodies 
That I may wrap them 
 In a blue cloud-cloth 
Away from the too rough fingers 
Of the world. 

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My melody to Hughes' words
p64 8-14sc
From The Weary Blues (Alfred A. Knopf, 1926) by Langston Hughes.
Dreams - https://soundcloud.com/user-734457954/dreams-langston-hughes-in-song?si=761e8412f6864530aa6f67783c5242e8&utm_source=clipboard&utm_medium=text&utm_campaign=social_sharing 
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Langston often takes the part of another in his poems, and I am wondering who The Dream Keeper is here. In his poem ‘Dreams’, he says ‘Hold fast to your dreams’, while here he says give them to the dream keeper to stay safe from the too rough fingers of the world. The first says stay true to your dreams despite all the knocks you suffer, while this seems to say give me your dreams to avoid the hard knocks. 

Did he change his mind? Is he testing two viewpoints? Or is there some place where the opposites meet? If the Dream Keeper is God or the Poet, the message might be - put your dreams into their safekeeping, so they remain untarnished, unbroken and potent while you fight for them, like, perhaps, the flag that flies high while the battle rages all around it. 

What would this mean in practice? I suppose do not let setbacks destroy your dream. 'Dream' links to 'Heart melodies' - so perhaps connected with love.  If the dream is valid, its day may yet come. In this respect, it relates to Whittier’s Don’t Quit.

The Dream Keeper - Langston Hughes (in song)

I cried over beautiful things knowing no beautiful thing lasts.

The field of cornflower yellow is a scarf at the neck of the copper sunburned woman, 
       the mother of the year, the taker of seeds.

The northwest wind comes and the yellow is torn full of holes, new beautiful things 
       come in the first spit of snow on the northwest wind, and the old things go, 
       not one lasts.

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My melody to Sandburg's words
stujul12 x4sc
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https://www.davidlose.net/2013/09/autumn-movement/
Carl Sandburg’s short but beautiful “Autumn Movement”...also links the movement of seasons – and particularly the movement from the lush vibrancy of summer to the decay of autumn – to the movement of our hearts. For we, like the voice of Sandburg’s narrator, constantly – and understandably – hold steadfastly to whatever it is we may cherish in the hope that it will last. The beauty of summer, youth, our children, whatever – none of this lasts, for all of life  is fleeting, but we so wish it would.

The pitch and tenor of the poem is reminiscent of the Teacher in Ecclesiastes, offering a realism that invites what at first appears a stark assessment of our condition but then yields to the recognition that it is only by releasing one particular beauty to decay that we can detect, and be delighted by, a new beauty. So whether it is a relationship, or a season, or the very soul and spirit that animates us, death always and ineluctably precedes resurrection, and so to be reborn you must first accept that you will die.
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https://poets.org/poet/carl-sandburg
Carl Sandburg was born in Galesburg, Illinois, on Jan 6, 1878. His parents, August and Clara Johnson, had emigrated to America from the north of Sweden. After encountering several August Johnsons in his job for the railroad, the Sandburg’s father renamed the family. The Sandburgs were very poor; Carl left school at the age of thirteen to work odd jobs, from laying bricks to dishwashing, to help support his family. At seventeen, he traveled west to Kansas as a hobo. He then served eight months in Puerto Rico during the Spanish-American war. While serving, Sandburg met a student at Lombard College, the small school located in Sandburg’s hometown. The young man convinced Sandburg to enroll in Lombard after his return from the war...
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https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poets/carl-sandburg 
He studied at Lombard College, and then moved to Milwaukee, Wisconsin, where he worked as an organizer for the Socialist Democratic Party. In 1913, he moved to Chicago, Illinois and wrote for the Chicago Daily News. His first poems were published by Harriet Monroe in Poetry magazine. Sandburg’s collection Chicago Poems (1916) was highly regarded, and he received the Pulitzer Prize for Corn Huskers (1918)...

His range of interests was enumerated by his close friend, Harry Golden, who, in his study of the poet, called Sandburg “the one American writer who distinguished himself in five fields—poetry, history, biography, fiction, and music.”...

Perhaps Sandburg was best known to America as the singing bard—the “voice of America singing,” says Golden. Sandburg was an author accepted as a personality, as was Mark Twain. Requests for his lectures began to appear as early as 1908. He was his own accompanist, and was not merely a musician of sorts; he played the guitar well enough to have been a pupil of Andres Segovia. Sandburg’s songs were projected by a voice “in which you hear farm hands wailing and levee Negroes moaning.”...

For all this fame, he remained unassuming. What he wanted from life was “to be out of jail, ... to eat regular, ... to get what I write printed, ... a little love at home and a little nice affection hither and yon over the American landscape, ... [and] to sing every day.”

Autumn Movement - Carl Sandburg (in song)

From you have I been absent in the spring,
When proud-pied April, dressed in all his trim,
Hath put a spirit of youth in everything,
That heavy Saturn laughed and leaped with him 
Yet nor the lays of birds, nor the sweet smell
Of different flowers in odour and-in hue,
Could make me any summer’s story tell,
Or from their proud lap pluck them where they grew:
Nor did I wonder at the lily’s white,
Nor praise the deep vermilion in the rose;
They were but sweet, but figures of delight
Drawn after you, – you pattern of all those.
    Yet seem’d it winter still, and, you away,
    As with your shadow I with these did play.

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My melody to Shakespeare’s words
Sonnet 98 WillSkake stufeb22 p117edsc
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https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poets/william-shakespeare 
While William Shakespeare’s reputation is based primarily on his plays, he became famous first as a poet. With the partial exception of the Sonnets (1609), quarried since the early 19th century for autobiographical secrets allegedly encoded in them, the nondramatic writings have traditionally been pushed to the margins of the Shakespeare industry. Yet the study of his nondramatic poetry can illuminate Shakespeare’s activities as a poet emphatically of his own age, especially in the period of extraordinary literary ferment in the last ten or twelve years of the reign of Queen Elizabeth.

Shakespeare’s exact birth date remains unknown. He was baptized in Holy Trinity Church in Stratford-upon-Avon on April 26, 1564, his mother’s third child, but the first to survive infancy. This has led scholars to conjecture that he was born on April 23rd, given the era’s convention of baptizing newborns on their third day. Shakespeare’s father, John Shakespeare, moved to Stratford in about 1552 and rapidly became a prominent figure in the town’s business and politics. He rose to be bailiff, the highest official in the town, but then in about 1575-1576 his prosperity declined markedly and he withdrew from public life. In 1596, thanks to his son’s success and persistence, he was granted a coat of arms by the College of Arms, and the family moved into New Place, the grandest house in Stratford…

At the age of 18, in November 1582, he married Anne Hathaway, daughter of a local farmer. She was pregnant with Susanna Shakespeare, who was baptized on May 26, 1583. The twins, Hamnet and Judith Shakespeare, were baptized on February 2, 1585. There were no further children from the union….

While the London theatres were closed, some actors tried to make a living by touring outside the capital. Shakespeare turned from the business of scriptwriting to the pursuit of art and patronage; unable to pursue his career in the theatrical marketplace, he adopted a more conventional course. Shakespeare’s first publication, Venus and Adonis (1593), was dedicated to the 18-year-old Henry Wriothesley, third Earl of Southampton…

None of Shakespeare’s works has been so tirelessly ransacked for biographical clues as the 154 sonnets, published with A Lover’s Complaint by Thomas Thorpe in 1609…

The 154 sonnets are conventionally divided between the “young man” sonnets (1-126) and the “dark lady” sonnets (127-152), with the final pair often seen as an envoy or coda to the collection. There is no evidence that such a division has chronological implications, though the volume is usually read in such a way. Shakespeare employs the conventional English sonnet form: three quatrains capped with a couplet. Drama is conjured within individual poems, as the speaker wrestles with some problem or situation; it is generated by the juxtaposition of poems, with instant switches of tone, mood, and style; it is implied by cross-references and interrelationships within the sequence as a whole…

The sonnets were apparently composed during a period of ten or a dozen years starting in about 1592-1593…

Shakespeare died on April 23, 1616, on what may have been his 52nd birthday.

From you have I been absent in the spring: Sonnet 98 - Shakespeare (in song)

No man is an island,
Entire of itself;
Every man is a piece of the continent,
A part of the main.  If a clod be washed away by the sea,
Europe is the less,
As well as if a promontory were:
As well as if a manor of thy friend's
Or of thine own were.  Any man's death diminishes me,
Because I am involved in mankind.
And therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls;
It tolls for thee.

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My melody to Donne’s words
bpksc
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https://englishsummary.com/no-man-is-an-island-poem-summary-and-line-by-line-analysis-by-john-donne/
John Donne in his poem “No Man is an Island” explores the interconnectedness of all people. Donne essentially makes the case that because each person is a part of the larger whole that is humanity itself, people need one another and are better off together than they are alone. The passage is a well-known passage from Donne’s Devotions Upon Emergent Occasions rather than a whole poem.

The Devotions explore what it means to be a human being and the relationship between humanity and God. They were written in 1623 while Donne was suffering from a terrible illness. The 23 sections of this book each include a “Meditation,” a “Expostulation,” and a “Prayer.” The section in question is from the 17th “Meditation.”
About the poet

Born into a family of recusants, John Donne was an English poet, scholar, soldier, and secretary who subsequently joined the Church of England as a cleric. He was appointed Dean of London’s St. Paul’s Cathedral with royal support (16211631). He is regarded as the foremost poet who embodies metaphysical poets.

His poetical creations, which include sonnets, love poems, religious poetry, Latin translations, epigrams, elegies, lullabies, and satires, are known for their figurative and sensual style. He is renowned for his sermons as well.

No Man Is An Island - John Donne (in song)

My mother groand! my father wept. 
Into the dangerous world I leapt: 
Helpless, naked, piping loud; 
Like a fiend hid in a cloud. 

Struggling in my fathers hands: 
Striving against my swaddling bands: 
Bound and weary I thought best 
To sulk upon my mothers breast.

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My melody to Blake’s poem
2 WB bpk altx6
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My first tune: https://soundcloud.com/user-734457954/infant-sorrow-william-blake-in-song?in=user-734457954/sets/william-blake-poems-with-my&si=f99745b0219940ff9aefe65aacac4e2e&utm_source=clipboard&utm_medium=text&utm_campaign=social_sharing and written earlier with its companion, Infant Joy https://soundcloud.com/user-734457954/infantjoy?in=user-734457954/sets/william-blake-poems-with-my&si=ac8792165c19473e8d50bcd937f4eaa0&utm_source=clipboard&utm_medium=text&utm_campaign=social_sharing 

The contrast between the two poems in Songs of Innocence and of Experience is striking. 

Nothing could be more sweet than Infant Joy, who sings and names herself on her second day of life to a well-wishing stranger. And the unnamed infant, who leaps like a fiend into a dangerous world, as her parents groan and weep, and who struggles in vain against their attempts to clothe her before sulking, bound and tired, on her mother’s breast.

Infant Sorrow - William Blake (in song)

Because I could not stop for Death –
He kindly stopped for me –
The Carriage held but just Ourselves –
And Immortality.

We slowly drove – He knew no haste
And I had put away
My labor and my leisure too,
For His Civility –

We passed the School, where Children strove
At Recess – in the Ring –
We passed the Fields of Gazing Grain –
We passed the Setting Sun –

Or rather – He passed Us –
The Dews drew quivering and Chill –
For only Gossamer, my Gown –
My Tippet – only Tulle –

We paused before a House that seemed
A Swelling of the Ground –
The Roof was scarcely visible –
The Cornice – in the Ground –

Since then – 'tis Centuries – and yet
Feels shorter than the Day
I first surmised the Horses' Heads
Were toward Eternity –

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My melody to Dickinson’s words
123
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https://poets.org/poem/because-i-could-not-stop-death-479 
In a letter to Abiah Root, Dickinson once asked, "Does not Eternity appear dreadful to you . . . I often get thinking of it and it seems so dark to me that I almost wish there was no Eternity. To think that we must forever live and never cease to be. It seems as if Death which all so dread because it launches us upon an unknown world would be a relief to so endless a state of existense.”
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Justin van Huyssteen
https://artincontext.org/because-i-could-not-stop-for-death-by-emily-dickinson-analysis/ 
"Because I could not stop for death" is one of Emily Dickinson's most celebrated poems and was composed around 1863. In the poem, a female speaker tells the story of how she was visited by "Death," personified as a "kindly" gentleman, and taken for a ride in his carriage. This ride appears to take the speaker past symbols of the different stages of life, before coming to a halt at what is most likely her own grave… 

We are given some older and more obscure terms here to refer to why she is cold. Her “Gown” is “Gossamer”, meaning light and thin. And she wears a “Tippet”, which is a kind of clothing that covers the shoulders, but it is “Tulle”, meaning that it is made of a net-like, and therefore breezy, fabric.
She feels the cold of death coming upon her.

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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Because_I_could_not_stop_for_Death 
The poem has been set to music by Aaron Copland as the twelfth song of his song cycle Twelve Poems of Emily Dickinson. John Adams set the poem to music as the second movement of his choral symphony Harmonium. It has also been set to music by Natalie Merchant (on Retrospective: 1995–2005).


Because I could not stop for Death - Emily Dickinson (in song)

Tears, idle tears, I know not what they mean,
Tears from the depth of some divine despair
Rise in the heart, and gather to the eyes,
In looking on the happy Autumn-fields,
And thinking of the days that are no more.

         Fresh as the first beam glittering on a sail,
That brings our friends up from the underworld,
Sad as the last which reddens over one
That sinks with all we love below the verge;
So sad, so fresh, the days that are no more.

         Ah, sad and strange as in dark summer dawns
The earliest pipe of half-awaken'd birds
To dying ears, when unto dying eyes
The casement slowly grows a glimmering square;
So sad, so strange, the days that are no more.

         Dear as remember'd kisses after death,
And sweet as those by hopeless fancy feign'd
On lips that are for others; deep as love,
Deep as first love, and wild with all regret;
O Death in Life, the days that are no more!

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My melody to Tennyson’s words
nnoised6mar25
Painting by Howard Hodgkin
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tears,_Idle_Tears
"Tears, Idle Tears" is a lyric poem written in 1847 by Alfred, Lord Tennyson (1809–1892), the Victorian-era English poet. Published as one of the "songs" in his The Princess (1847), it is regarded for the quality of its lyrics. A Tennyson anthology describes the poem as "one of the most Virgilian of Tennyson's poems and perhaps his most famous lyric”…

The poem, one of the "songs" of The Princess, has been set to music a number of times. Edward Lear put the lyric to music in the 19th century, and Ralph Vaughan Williams' pianistic setting of 1903 was described by The Times as "one of the most beautiful settings in existence of Tennyson's splendid lyric".
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https://poemanalysis.com/alfred-tennyson/tears-idle-tears/ 
In ‘Tears, Idle Tears’, Alfred Lord Tennyson recollects the memory of his loved one after seeing the scenic beauty of Tintern Abbey. Each of the elements of the place reminds him of the person. After reading the poem, it becomes clear that the person he is thinking of is no more…
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There seems some disagreement on whether the poem is prompted by Tennyson’s “beloved friend Arthur Henry Hallam [who] died a premature death”, or his “unhappy attachment to the lovely Rosa Baring... [whose] family evidently disapproved of Rosa's continued relationship with the son of Somersby's alcoholic clergyman, and she ultimately severed the connection.”

Tears Idle Tears - Tennyson (in song)

Once a dream did weave a shade, 
O'er my Angel-guarded bed, 
That an Emmet [Ant] lost it's way 
Where on grass methought I lay.  

Troubled wilderd and forlorn 
Dark benighted travel-worn, 
Over many a tangled spray [of vegetation] 
All heart-broke I heard her say.  

O my children! do they cry
 Do they hear their father sigh. 
Now they look abroad to see,
 Now return and weep for me.  

Pitying I dropp'd a tear: 
But I saw a glow-worm near: 
Who replied. What wailing wight [creature/spirit] 
Calls the watchman of the night.

  I am set to light the ground, 
While the beetle goes his round:
 Follow now the beetles hum, 
Little wanderer hie thee home [go quickly].

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My melody to Blake’s words

With instrumental by Jack Always https://soundcloud.com/prod-jackalways
stuapr17 x4
Painting by Blake
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https://poemanalysis.com/william-blake/a-dream/ 
A Dream’ by William Blake details the plight of a lost ant who is trying to find her way back to her children and their father.

https://www.litcharts.com/poetry/william-blake/a-dream 
…Of course, all this talk about ants and glow-worms is really an allegory—a story meant to illuminate a truth about the human world. The glow-worm’s readiness to lead and care for the ant makes it much like the protective angel that “guard[s]” the speaker’s bed…


This dream, in other words, is telling the speaker something about their own life and difficulties. This dream has a message: friendly (and, given the nod to the "angel" at the poem's start, divine) guidance is always available to those who ask for it…

William Blake (1757-1827) is revered as one of the most unique and influential figures in the history of English literature. Though he is now often considered the first of the Romantic poets because of his ideals regarding nature, the imagination, and creativity, he was considered peculiar and even deranged in his own time. Unlike contemporaries such as Samuel Taylor Coleridge and William Wordsworth, he struggled to find an audience—either popular or critical—that understood or appreciated his work.

Part of this is due to the visionary quality of Blake’s poetry. Blake spoke of witnessing angels and other spiritual phenomena since his early childhood, and these experiences informed his work to such a degree that even Coleridge, himself a visionary, remarked that he was quite “common-place” compared to Blake.

Blake didn't just write poetry: he illustrated, hand-engraved, printed, and distributed his own poems. His illustrations often deepen, complicate, or even contradict the narratives they accompany…
His process was an expression of his belief that the artist's job is to "melt[] apparent surfaces away" so that everything "appear[s] to man as it is, infinite.”…

The Industrial Revolution was also heavy on Blake's mind. He worried human beings were losing touch with nature, and therefore with God, themselves, and one another. In "A Dream," for instance, humanity and nature are all in communion with the divine. Just as the glow-worm’s light and "the beetle's hum" are a lifeline for the lost ant, nature, Blake believed, could provide guidance and instruction. In his view, feeling (i.e. the ant’s cries, the speaker’s tears), not intellect, allows one to access the earth’s inherent wisdom.

A Dream - William Blake (in song)

She stands  In the quiet darkness, 
This troubled woman, 
Bowed by 
Weariness and pain, 
 Like an Autumn flower
 In the frozen rain. 
 Like a  Wind-blown autumn flower 
That never lifts its head  
Again. 
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My melody to Hughes’ words
stumay31 x10

Troubled Woman - Langston Hughes (in song)

Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?
Thou art more lovely and more temperate:
Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May,
And summer’s lease hath all too short a date;
Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines,
And often is his gold complexion dimm'd;
And every fair from fair sometime declines,
By chance or nature’s changing course untrimm'd;
But thy eternal summer shall not fade,
Nor lose possession of that fair thou ow’st;
Nor shall death brag thou wander’st in his shade,
When in eternal lines to time thou grow’st:
   So long as men can breathe or eyes can see,
   So long lives this, and this gives life to thee.

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My melody to Shakespeare’s words
stuapr17 4-6edp2
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sonnet_18 
Sonnet 18 (also known as "Shall I compare thee to a summer's day") is one of the best-known of the 154 sonnets written by English poet and playwright William Shakespeare.

In the sonnet, the speaker asks whether he should compare the Fair Youth to a summer's day, but notes that he has qualities that surpass a summer's day, which is one of the themes of the poem. He also notes the qualities of a summer day are subject to change and will eventually diminish. The speaker then states that the Fair Youth will live forever in the lines of the poem, as long as it can be read. There is an irony being expressed in this sonnet: it is not the actual young man who will be eternalized, but the description of him contained in the poem, and the poem contains scant or no description of the young man, but instead contains vivid and lasting descriptions of a summer day, which the young man is supposed to outlive…

"Ow'st" in line ten can carry two meanings, each common at the time: "ownest" and "owest". "Owe", in Shakespeare's day, was sometimes used as a synonym for "own". However, "owest" conveys the idea that beauty is something borrowed from nature—that it must be paid back. In this interpretation, "fair" can be a pun on "fare", or the fare required by nature for life's journey…

https://nosweatshakespeare.com/sonnets/18/ 
Here’s a ‘translation’ into modern English:

Shall I compare you to a summer’s day? You are more lovely and more moderate: Harsh winds disturb the delicate buds of May, and summer doesn’t last long enough. Sometimes the sun is too hot, and its golden face is often dimmed by clouds. All beautiful things eventually become less beautiful, either by the experiences of life or by the passing of time. But your eternal beauty won’t fade, nor lose any of its quality. And you will never die, as you will live on in my enduring poetry. As long as there are people still alive to read poems this sonnet will live, and you will live in it.

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Interesting to see how the prose translation compares to the poem. 

The translation would never live ‘so long as men can breathe or eyes can see’. But the poem does.

Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day? - W Shakespeare (in song)

I will arise and go now, and go to Innisfree,
And a small cabin build there, of clay and wattles made;
Nine bean-rows will I have there, a hive for the honey-bee,
And live alone in the bee-loud glade.

And I shall have some peace there, for peace comes dropping slow,
Dropping from the veils of the morning to where the cricket sings;
There midnight’s all a glimmer, and noon a purple glow,
And evening full of the linnet’s wings.

I will arise and go now, for always night and day
I hear lake water lapping with low sounds by the shore;
While I stand on the roadway, or on the pavements grey,
I hear it in the deep heart’s core.
——————-

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/
"The Lake Isle of Innisfree" is a twelve-line poem comprising three quatrains, written by William Butler Yeats in 1888 and first published in the National Observer in 1890…

Lake Isle of Innisfree is an uninhabited island within Lough Gill, in Ireland, near which Yeats spent his summers as a child. Yeats describes the inspiration for the poem coming from a "sudden" memory of his childhood while walking down Fleet Street in London in 1888. He writes, "I had still the ambition, formed in Sligo in my teens, of living in imitation of Thoreau on Innisfree, a little island in Lough Gill, and when walking through Fleet Street very homesick I heard a little tinkle of water and saw a fountain in a shop-window which balanced a little ball upon its jet, and began to remember lake water. From the sudden remembrance came my poem "Innisfree," my first lyric with anything in its rhythm of my own music. I had begun to loosen rhythm as an escape from rhetoric and from that emotion of the crowd that rhetoric brings, but I only understood vaguely and occasionally that I must for my special purpose use nothing but the common syntax. A couple of years later I could not have written that first line with its conventional archaism—"Arise and go"—nor the inversion of the last stanza.”

————————

https://www.litcharts.com/poetry/william-butler-yeats/the-lake-isle-of-innisfree

The poem opens with the phrase “I will arise and go,” which appears word-for-word twice in the King James Version of the Bible (Yeats, born into a Protestant family, likely used this text for worship). This allusion to the Bible at the poem’s very outset establishes that the speaker’s concerns—and especially the fixation on Innisfree—are spiritual in nature…
Yeats’s early poems were shaped by Romantics like William Blake ("London") and Percy Bysshe Shelley ("Love’s Philosophy"). As a teenager, Yeats read Henry David Thoreau’s Walden, which gives an account of Thoreau's two-year spiritual and intellectual journey while living alone in a cabin on Walden Pond in Massachusetts…
The popularity and reach of “The Lake Isle of Innisfree” cannot be overstated. It is probably Yeats’s best-known poem, which is significant as he is by and large considered one of the most important literary figures of the twentieth century. The poem’s incantatory rhythms have spawned many musical adaptations, such as Judy Collins’s "Innisfree.”…

The Lake Isle of Innisfree - WB Yeats (in song)...

She
Who searched for lovers
In the night
Has gone the quiet way
Into the still,
Dark land of death
Beyond the rim of day.

Now like a little lonely waif
She walks
An endless street
And gives her kiss to 
nothingness.
Would God his lips were sweet!

—————
My melody to Hughes’ words
LH p11 x14

To A Little Lover-Lass, Dead - Langston Hughes (in song)

Black lake, black boat, two black, cut-paper people.
Where do the black trees go that drink here?
Their shadows must cover Canada.

A little light is filtering from the water flowers.
Their leaves do not wish us to hurry:
They are round and flat and full of dark advice.

Cold worlds shake from the oar.
The spirit of blackness is in us, it is in the fishes.
A snag is lifting a valedictory, pale hand;

Stars open among the lilies.
Are you not blinded by such expressionless sirens?
This is the silence of astounded souls.

—————————————-
My melody to words by Sylvia Plath
SPlatt 93 x2
————————-
This seems a dream about death and perhaps suicide and what lies on the other side. In the Greek myth, Charon ferries the dead souls across to the next world. Are the paper people made from the black trees that drink here, perhaps of the water of mortality, of death, that covers Canada?

Among this inevitable death of all, and in the water of death, however, live the water flowers that ‘filter’ a little light. So if black symbolises death, then light must be life. The flowers filter the light, perhaps of immortality, so that it is a limited life. And the leaves of the flowers want us to live this life and not hurry away to the immortal light, for example by suicide. The spirit of death lies within us, of mortality. And it is in the fishes - they who live in the mortal water.

And yet there is another element in these waters - the snag, the unexpected obstacle, in this case, perhaps, to the continuing pursuit of mortal life. This snag has a ‘pale hand’ - half-way between the light and dark - and it is waving goodbye. The leaves of the flowers filtering the light do not want us hurrying to death, but the snag says, go, farewell.

Immediately after this farewell, stars open among the lillies. No longer is the light filtered. Its direct light calls as irresistibly as the ancient Greek sirens. And we are not blinded by it; we are astounded by it - stunned, greatly surprised, says the dictionary. The context of this great surprise suggests more a positive than a negative surprise from a blinding starlight that does not blind the writer.

——————————
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sylvia_Plath
Sylvia Plath Oct 27, 1932 – Feb 11, 1963) was an American poet and author. She is credited with advancing the genre of confessional poetry and is best known for The Colossus and Other Poems (1960), Ariel (1965), and The Bell Jar, a semi-autobiographical novel published shortly before her suicide in 1963. The Collected Poems was published in 1981…For this collection Plath was awarded a Pulitzer Prize in Poetry.

Born in Boston, Massachusetts, Plath graduated from Smith College… and the University of Cambridge, England, where she was a student at Newnham College…She married fellow poet Ted Hughes in 1956, and they lived together in the United States and then in England. Their relationship was tumultuous and, in her letters, Plath alleges abuse at his hands. They had two children before separating in 1962…

Plath was clinically depressed for most of her adult life and was treated multiple times with early versions of electroconvulsive therapy (ECT). She died by suicide. 

Plath met poet Ted Hughes on February 25, 1956…We kept writing poems to each other. Then it just grew out of that, I guess, a feeling that we both were writing so much and having such a fine time doing it, we decided that this should keep on… In June 1957, Plath and Hughes moved to the United States…The couple moved back to England in December 1959 and lived in London at 3 Chalcot Square, near the Primrose Hill area of Regent's Park, where an English Heritage plaque records Plath's residence…in July 1962 Plath discovered Hughes was having an affair with Wevill; in September, Plath and Hughes separated.

Beginning in October 1962, Plath experienced a great burst of creativity and composed most of the poems on which her reputation now rests…

Crossing the Water - Sylvia Plath (in song)

Oh please believe me 
Love me, 
Leave me,
Said the sailor to the sea. 

My heart has woken 
Spoken
Broken 
And I must make my peace. 

My moon moves gently through the night 
Misting the clouds away. 
My mood is rising as its light 
Dispels the clouds of grey. 

Oh take me, shake me, Don’t forsake me
I am yours tonight. 

My heart is bursting, Thirsting, hurting 
For your love tonight.

—————-
The song was recorded on a station platform, empty except for someone sweeping the platform in approximate time to the music.

Moon Magic - Ian

Hey! Hey!
That’s what the
Blues singers say.
Singing minor melodies
They laugh,
Hey! Hey!

My man’s done left me,
Chile, he’s gone away.
My good man’s left me,
Babe, he’s gone away.
Now the cryin’ blues
Haunts me night and day.

Hey! . . . Hey!

Weary,
Weary,
Trouble, pain.
Sun’s gonna shine
Somewhere
Again.

I got a railroad ticket,
Pack my trunk and ride.

Sing ’em, sister!

Got a railroad ticket,
Pack my trunk and ride.
And when I get on the train
I’ll cast my blues aside.

Laughing,
Hey! . . . Hey!
Laugh a loud,
Hey! Hey!

————
My melody to Hughes’ words

Blues Fantasy - Langston Hughes (in song)

O Western Wind
My melody to Anon’s words

Western wind, when wilt thou blow,
That the small rain down can rain?
Christ that my love were in my arms
And I in my bed again.

in Old English spelling:
Westron wynde, when wyll thow blow
the smalle rayne downe can rayne?
Cryst yf my love were in my armys,
And I yn my bed agayne!

————————-
https://afewgoodpoems.blogspot.com/2013/03/western-wind.html 
A Tudor manuscript from the court of Henry VIII provides the earliest known version of "Western Wind". The lyric was used as the basis (cantus firmus) of Masses by English composers John Taverner, Christopher Tye and John Sheppard. The tune first appears with words in a partbook of around 1530, which contains mainly keyboard music. Historians believe that the lyrics are a few hundred years older ('Middle English') and the words are a fragment of medieval poetry.
———————
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zephyrus 
In Greek tradition, Zephyrus [the West Wind] became the consort of Iris, the goddess of the rainbow and messenger of the gods. According to Nonnus, a late-antiquity poet, together they became the parents of Pothos, the god of desire…

In his most notable myth, Zephyrus fell in love with a beautiful Spartan prince named Hyacinthus, who nevertheless rejected him and became the lover of another god, Apollo. One day when the prince and Apollo were playing at discus-throwing, Zephyrus deflected the course of Apollo's discus, redirecting it right onto Hyacinthus's head and fatally wounding him. Hyacinthus' blood then became a new flower, the hyacinth… Zephyrus’s role in this myth reflects his connection to flowers and springtime as the gentle west wind, who, in spite of his traditional gentleness, is nonetheless a harsh lover, like all the winds…

Like all the other wind gods, Zephyrus is represented in ancient Greek art with wings…

—————————

https://www.johnderbyshire.com/Readings/owesternwind.html 
The Lover in Winter Plaineth for the Spring

Anonymous, ca. a.d. 1500

Here is one of the shortest [lyrics], by an anonymous poet of the late fifteenth or early sixteenth century — which is to say, the reign of Henry VII or Henry VIII.

Commonly regarded (or disregarded) as a sort of dead zone between the scattered glories of Middle English and the flowering of the English Renaissance — between, in a nutshell, Chaucer and Shakespeare — there was in fact a good deal going on in vernacular literature at this time. England's first printing press had been set up outside London in 1476. Long decades of civil war and national bankruptcy ended at the battle of Bosworth Field in 1485. Henry VII was sober, clever, businesslike, and patriotic. Henry VIII, though no doubt he had his little ways, was intelligent and well-read.

O Western Wind - Anon (in song)

What are days for?
Days are where we live.   
They come, they wake us   
Time and time over.
They are to be happy in:   
Where can we live but days?

Ah, solving that question
Brings the priest and the doctor   
In their long coats
Running over the fields.

———————
https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poets/philip-larkin 
Philip Larkin was born in Coventry, England in 1922. He earned his BA from St. John’s College, Oxford, where he befriended novelist and poet Kingsley Amis and finished with First Class Honours in English. After graduating, Larkin undertook professional studies to become a librarian. He worked in libraries his entire life, first in Shropshire and Leicester, and then at Queen’s College in Belfast, and finally as librarian at the University of Hull. 

In addition to collections of poetry, Larkin published two novels—Jill (1946) and A Girl in Winter (1947)—as well as criticism, essays, and reviews of jazz music. The latter were collected in two volumes: All What Jazz: A Record Diary 1961-1968 (1970; 1985) and Required Writing: Miscellaneous Pieces 1955-1982 (1984). He was one of post-war England’s most famous poets, and was commonly referred to as “England’s other Poet Laureate” until his death in 1985. Indeed, when the position of laureate became vacant in 1984, many poets and critics favoured Larkin’s appointment, but Larkin preferred to avoid the limelight…

Despite his wide popularity, Larkin “shied from publicity, rarely consented to interviews or readings, cultivated his image as right-wing curmudgeon and grew depressed at his fame,” according to J.D. McClatchy in the New York Times Book Review. Phoenix contributor Alun R. Jones suggests that, as librarian at the remote University of Hull, Larkin “avoided the literary, the metropolitan, the group label, and embraced the nonliterary, the provincial, and the purely personal.”…

In Nine Contemporary Poets: A Critical Introduction (Methuen, 1979), Peter R. King contends that a close reading of Hardy taught Larkin “that a modern poet could write about the life around him in the language of the society around him. He encouraged [Larkin] to use his poetry to examine the reality of his own life.” In his work Philip Larkin, Martin also claims that Larkin learned from Hardy “that his own life, with its often casual discoveries, could become poems, and that he could legitimately share such experience with his readers. From this lesson [came Larkin’s] belief that a poem is better based on something from ‘unsorted’ experience than on another poem or other art.”

Days - Philip Larkin (in song)

The life that I have
Is all that I have
And the life that I have
Is yours.

The love that I have
Of the life that I have
Is yours and yours and yours.
 
A sleep I shall have
A rest I shall have
Yet death will be but a pause.
 
For the peace of my years
In the long green grass
Will be yours and yours and yours.

————————

My melody to Marks’  words

With accompanying instrumental Noire by Jack Always https://on.soundcloud.com/8rW8U4xg2VNZZFSlav

————————
Wikipedia
Leo Marks, a cryptographer for the Special Operations Executive (SOE) in London, nurtured a hapless passion for Ruth, the daughter of Sir Charles Hambro, executive head of SOE. He wrote this poem when she was killed in an air crash in Canada. Later he gave it as a code poem to agent Violet Szabo for her to use when encoding her messages. She landed in France in April 1944. She was arrested in June, holding off the Germans with her sten gun until her ammunition ran out, in order to give her companion a chance to continue his mission. She was executed in Ravensbruck camp. Her story features in the film Carve Her Name With Pride. Leo Marks’ exploits in the code war are recounted in his memoirs ‘Between Silk and Cyanide’ p201.

--------------------
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Life_That_I_Have

"The Life That I Have" (sometimes referred to as "Yours") is a short poem written by Leo Marks and used as a poem code in the Second World War. In the war, famous poems were used to encrypt messages. This was, however, found to be insecure because enemy cryptanalysts were able to locate the original from published sources. Marks countered this by using his own written creations. "The Life That I Have" was an original poem composed on Christmas Eve 1943 and was originally written by Marks in memory of his girlfriend Ruth, who had just died in a plane crash in Canada.

Code Poem for the French Resistance - Leo Marks (in song)

Sonnet 29
My melody to Shakespeare’s words
————-

When, in disgrace with fortune and men’s eyes,
I all alone beweep my outcast state,
And trouble deaf heaven with my bootless cries,
And look upon myself and curse my fate,
Wishing me like to one more rich in hope,
Featured like him, like him with friends possessed,
Desiring this man’s art and that man’s scope,
With what I most enjoy contented least;
Yet in these thoughts myself almost despising,
Haply I think on thee, and then my state,
(Like to the lark at break of day arising
From sullen earth) sings hymns at heaven’s gate;
       For thy sweet love remembered such wealth brings
       That then I scorn to change my state with kings.

———————-
https://www.poetryfoundation.org/articles/90061/william-shakespeare-selections
We know more about Shakespeare (1564–1616) than about most people who died more than 400 years ago. We are quite sure, for example, that he grew up the son of a glove maker in Stratford-upon-Avon, married around the age of 18, and had three children before leaving around 1587 to pursue a career in London as an actor and a writer for the stage. His plays were popular and well attended, and his theatre group performed several times for King James I. He died in 1616, likely at the age of 52; many of his plays were unpublished in book form until 1623. His work was well admired in his own lifetime—Ben Jonson’s elegy proclaimed it “to be such / As neither man nor muse can praise too much”—even though the theatre in his time was far from a respected literary venue…

The Sonnets
In his late 20s and early 30s, Shakespeare wrote a number of sonnets, 154 of which were published together in 1609. The sonnet is a 14-line poetic form, most likely descending from Sicilian popular song, that was ubiquitous among major Italian poets throughout the 1300s. It was popularized in England by the 317 sonnets written by the Italian poet Petrarch. The variation of the form Shakespeare used—comprised of three quatrains and a concluding couplet, rhyming abab cdcd efef gg—is called the English or Shakespearean sonnet, although others had used it before Shakespeare. This different structure allows for more buildup of a subject or problem than the Italian/Petrarchan form and uses just two lines to conclude or resolve the poem in a rhyming couplet…

Contrary to some assumptions, Shakespeare’s sonnets don’t depict just romantic love, and when they do, it’s not always in its purest and most joyful form. Of course, some of the most famous sonnets, such as “Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?” (from Sonnet 18), “Let me not to the marriage of true minds” (from Sonnet 116), and “My mistress' eyes are nothing like the sun” (from Sonnet 130) contain some of the most quoted passages about love in the English language. But Shakespeare’s sonnets also articulate love’s tragedy (“That thou among the wastes of time must go,” from Sonnet 12), its sadness (“How like a winter hath my absence been / From thee,” from Sonnet 97), its despair (“I all alone beweep my outcast state, / And trouble deaf heaven with my bootless cries,” from Sonnet 29), and the hurt of unrequited love or betrayal (“Kill me outright with looks and rid my pain.” from Sonnet 139)…

Although there seems to be some consistency of address—Sonnets 1–126 are addressed to a young man, and Sonnets 127–154 are addressed to a “dark lady”—and there are details scattered throughout of a traitorous affair between the speaker’s lover and a best friend, the relationship between speaker and beloved is often ambiguous and discontinuous from sonnet to sonnet…It seems that if Shakespeare had any hand in the ordering, it was to thoroughly shuffle the deck, to let the poems unfold, irrespective of role, as universal declarations. 

————-
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sonnet_29 
Canadian singer and composer Rufus Wainwright musicalized the poem in the song of the same name (Sonnet 29). The song appears on his 2016 album "Take All My Loves: 9 Shakespeare Sonnets" and features British singer Florence Welch on leading vocals.

Sonnet 29 - When in disgrace with fortune and men’s eyes

The Heavenly Country - Stevie Smith (in song)

I sigh for the heavenly country,
Where the heavenly people pass,
And the sea is as quiet as a mirror
Of beautiful beautiful glass.
 
I walk in the heavenly field,
With lilies and poppies bright,
I am dressed in a heavenly coat
Of polished white.
 
When I walk in the heavenly parkland
My feet on the pasture are bare,
Tall waves the grass, but no harmful
Creature is there.
 
At night I fly over the housetops,
And stand on the bright moony beams;
Gold are all heaven’s rivers,
And silver her streams.

——————————-
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stevie_Smith
Florence Margaret Smith, known as Stevie Smith (20 September 1902 – 7 March 1971), was an English poet and novelist. She won the Cholmondeley Award and was awarded the Queen's Gold Medal for Poetry. A play, Stevie by Hugh Whitemore, based on her life, was adapted into a film starring Glenda Jackson.

When Stevie Smith was three years old she moved with her mother and sister to Palmers Green in North London, where she lived until her death in 1971. She resented the fact that her father had abandoned his family. Later, when her mother became ill, her aunt Madge Spear, whom Smith called "The Lion Aunt", came to live with them, raised Smith and her elder sister Molly, and became the most important person in Smith's life. Spear was a feminist who claimed to have "no patience" with men and, as Smith wrote, "she also had 'no patience' with Hitler". Smith and Molly, raised in a family of women, became attached to their own independence, in contrast to what Smith described as the typical Victorian family atmosphere of "Father knows best.”

When Smith was five she developed tuberculous peritonitis and was sent to a sanatorium near Broadstairs, Kent, where she remained for three years. She related that her preoccupation with death began when she was seven, at a time when she was very distressed at being sent away from her mother. Death and fear fascinated her, and provide the subjects of many of her poems. Her mother died when Smith was 16.

When she was suffering from the depression to which she was sporadically subject throughout her life Smith was so consoled by the thought of death as a release that, as she put it, she did not have to commit suicide. She wrote in several poems that death was "the only god who must come when he is called". Smith also suffered throughout her life from an acute nervousness, described as a mix of shyness and intense sensitivity.

Smith was educated at Palmers Green High School, the North London Collegiate School for Girls, and Mrs Hoster's Secretarial College. She spent the remainder of her life with her aunt, and worked as private secretary to Sir Neville Pearson at Newnes Publishing Company in London from 1923 to 1953. She corresponded and socialised widely with other writers and creative artists, including Elisabeth Lutyens, Sally Chilver, Inez Holden, Naomi Mitchison, Isobel English and Anna Kallin.

After she retired from Sir Neville Pearson's service following a nervous breakdown, she gave poetry readings and broadcasts on the BBC that gained her new friends and readers among a younger generation. Sylvia Plath became a fan of her poems and sent Smith a letter in 1962, describing herself as "a desperate Smith-addict". Plath expressed interest in meeting in person, but took her own life soon after she sent the letter…

In 2023, newly declassified UK government files revealed that Smith was considered as a candidate to be the new Poet Laureate of the United Kingdom in 1967 following the death of John Masefield.

The Heavenly City - Stevie Smith (in song)

Ars Poetica - Archibald Macleish (in song) 

A poem should be palpable and mute 
As a globed fruit,

Dumb
As old medallions to the thumb,

Silent as the sleeve-worn stone
Of casement ledges where the moss has grown—

A poem should be wordless   
As the flight of birds.

A poem should be motionless in time 
As the moon climbs,

Leaving, as the moon releases
Twig by twig the night-entangled trees,
Leaving, as the moon behind the winter leaves,   
Memory by memory the mind—

A poem should be motionless in time 
As the moon climbs.

A poem should be equal to:
Not true.

For all the history of grief
An empty doorway and a maple leaf.

For love
The leaning grasses and two lights above the sea—

A poem should not mean   
But be.

—————————-
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Archibald_MacLeish
Archibald MacLeish (1892 – 1982) was an American poet and writer, who was associated with the modernist school of poetry. MacLeish studied English at Yale University and law at Harvard University. He enlisted in and saw action during the First World War and lived in Paris in the 1920s with his wife, where they joined the community of literary expatriates that included such members as Gertrude Stein and Ernest Hemingway. They also became part of the famed coterie of Riviera hosts Gerald and Sarah Murphy, which included Hemingway, Zelda and F. Scott Fitzgerald, John Dos Passos, Fernand Léger, Jean Cocteau, Pablo Picasso, John O'Hara, Cole Porter, Dorothy Parker, and Robert Benchley.]. On returning to the United States, he contributed to Henry Luce's magazine Fortune from 1929 to 1938. For five years, MacLeish was the ninth Librarian of Congress, a post he accepted at the urging of President Franklin D. Roosevelt. From 1949 to 1962, he was Boylston Professor of Rhetoric and Oratory at Harvard. He was awarded three Pulitzer Prizes for his work…

MacLeish greatly admired T. S. Eliot and Ezra Pound, and his work shows quite a bit of their influence. He was the literary figure who played the most important role in Ezra Pound’s release from St. Elizabeths Hospital in Washington, D.C., where he was held between 1946 and 1958, after being found unfit to stand trial for high treason. MacLeish's early work was very traditionally modernist and accepted the contemporary modernist position holding that a poet was isolated from society. His most well-known poem, "Ars Poetica," contains a classic statement of the modernist aesthetic: "A poem should not mean / But be." He later broke with modernism's pure aesthetic. MacLeish himself was greatly involved in public life and came to believe that this was not only an appropriate, but also an inevitable role for a poet….
———————

https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poets/archibald-macleish

And the well-known, too often misunderstood “Ars Poetica” conveys in its images, imitative form, and self-contradictions MacLeish’s permanent conviction that a poem should both mean and be.

Ars Poetica - Archibald Mcleish (in song)

Good Morning — Midnight —
I'm coming Home —
Day — got tired of Me —
How could I — of Him?

Sunshine was a sweet place —
I liked to stay —
But Morn – didn’t want me — now —
So — Goodnight — Day!

I can look — can’t I —
When the East is Red?
The Hills — have a way — then —
That puts the Heart — abroad —

You — are not so fair — Midnight —
I chose — Day —
But — please take a little Girl —
He turned away!

————-
https://metasorting.com/en/poets/dickinson/good-morningmidnight 
Interesting, detailed bio

Good Morning Midnight - Emily Dickinson (in song)

A song unfinished perhaps with guitar from a while back, which I heard again and wanted to post.

Draw the Curtains Darling

Good Morning — Midnight —
I'm coming Home —
Day — got tired of Me —
How could I — of Him?

Sunshine was a sweet place —
I liked to stay —
But Morn – didn’t want me — now —
So — Goodnight — Day!

I can look — can’t I —
When the East is Red?
The Hills — have a way — then —
That puts the Heart — abroad —

You — are not so fair — Midnight —
I chose — Day —
But — please take a little Girl —
He turned away!

————-
This is my second attempt at the song, and in fact the one I’d intended posting! Though I also like the different mood of the first. 

https://metasorting.com/en/poets/dickinson/good-
morningmidnight 
Interesting, detailed bio

Good Morning Midnight (2) - Emily Dickinson (in song)

The sounds
Of the Harlem night
Drop one by one into stillness.
The last player-piano is closed. 
The last victrola ceases with the
“Jazz Boy Blues.”

The last crying baby sleeps
And the night - becomes
Still _ as a whispering heartbeat.
I toss _
Without rest in the darkness,
Weary as the tired night,
My soul
Empty as the silence,
Empty with a vague,
Aching emptiness,
Desiring
Needing someone,
Something.

I toss without rest
In the darkness
Until the new dawn
Wan and pale,
Descends like a white mist
Into the court-yard.

————————————
It is a summer night. So - warm, even hot, perhaps oppressive, people staying up late, and at last there comes quiet, stillness, like a whispering heart beat. Life continues, if only just. But the writer cannot sleep; he tosses restlessly, weary as the tired night itself. His soul is as empty as this silence of the shutdown summer night. It is an emptiness however that contains an ache, which is vague, unclear, but somehow to do with need and desire. He has the ‘Jazz Boy Blues’. 

The shorter second verse repeats a line from the first: ‘I toss without rest in the darkness’. And now this restless tossing - feeling unsettled, uncertain, unfulfilled - leads into the ‘new dawn’. But it is an unpromising dawn: ‘wan and pale’ - suggesting illness, exhaustion, weakness, lacking enthusiasm, energy. The night has not revived his energy. The new dawn ‘descends’ - not ascends - ‘like a white mist’ ‘into the court-yard’. A mist obscures vision and clarity. Nothing seems solid and real. And there is no energy in this dawn to create something new and vibrant. There is the contrast of night and day, of darkness and pale/white, perhaps referencing the racial prejudices of the period. Perhaps also referencing some divide in the writer’s mind/soul/body between the desire for someone to love and their absence. 

Interestingly, significantly perhaps, the poem ends in the ‘court-yard’ - a word that juxtaposes high and low (crown and commoner); and perhaps also ‘courting/love’ with ‘yard’, which in America could mean a garden or money (100 dollars). ‘Garden’ sounds positive, but ‘money’ less so.

The white mist descends into and fills this courtyard. If ‘white’ is intended derogatorily, oppressively, then ‘love’ seems a long way away. There is no redeeming feature in the writer’s mood: he has the Jazz Boy Blues.

Summer Night - Langston Hughes (in song)

Who killed Cock Robin?
I, said the Sparrow,
with my bow and arrow,
I killed Cock Robin.

Who saw him die?
I, said the Fly,
with my little teeny eye,
I saw him die.

Who caught his blood?
I, said the Fish,
with my little dish
I caught his blood.

Who'll make the shroud?
I, said the Beetle,
with my thread and needle,
I'll make the shroud.

Who'll dig his grave?
I, said the Owl,
with my pick and trowel,
I'll dig his grave.

Who'll be the parson?
I, said the Rook,
with my little book,
I'll be the parson.

Who'll be the clerk?
I, said the Lark,
if it's not in the dark,
I'll be the clerk.

Who'll carry the link?
I, said the Linnet,
I'll fetch it in a minute,
I'll carry the link.

Who'll be chief mourner?
I, said the Dove,
I mourn for my love,
I'll be chief mourner.

Who'll carry the coffin?
I, said the Kite,
if it's not through the night,
I'll carry the coffin.

Who'll bear the pall?
We, said the Wren,
both the cock and the hen,
We’ll bear the pall.

Who'll sing a psalm?
I, said the Thrush,
as she sat on a bush,
I'll sing a psalm.

Who'll toll the bell?
I, said the Bull,
because I can pull,
I'll toll the bell.

All the birds of the air
Fell a-sighing and a-sobbing, When they heard the bell toll
For poor Cock Robin.
————————

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cock_Robin 
"Who Killed Cock Robin" is an English-origin folk song and nursery rhyme...

The earliest record of the rhyme is in Tommy Thumb's Pretty Song Book, published in 1744, which noted only the first four verses. The extended version given below was printed c. 1770.

The rhyme also has an alternative ending, in which the sparrow who killed Cock Robin is hanged for his crime. 

Several early versions picture a stocky, strong-billed bullfinch tolling the bell, which may have been the original intention of the rhyme.

Origin and meaning
Although the earliest known record of the song is from the mid-eighteenth century, there is some evidence that it is much older. The death of a robin by an arrow is depicted in a 15th-century stained glass window at Buckland Rectory, Gloucestershire.

A similar fragmentary rhyme appears in the collected grammatical miscellany of 15th-century schoolmaster, Thomas Schort, which reads:

Y say a sparw
Schotte an arow
By an harow
Into a barow

The rhyme is also similar to a poem, Phyllyp Sparowe, written by John Skelton about 1508, in which the narrator laments the death of his pet bird. The use of the rhyme 'owl' with 'shovel' could suggest that it was originally used in older middle English pronunciation. Versions of the story appear to exist in other countries, including Germany

A number of theories have been advanced to explain the meaning of the rhyme:

The rhyme records a mythological event, such as the death of the god Balder from Norse mythology, or the ritual sacrifice of a king figure, as proposed by early folklorists as in the 'Cutty Wren' theory of a 'pagan survival'.
It is a parody of the death of King William II, who was killed by an arrow while hunting in the New Forest (Hampshire) in 1100, and who was known as William Rufus, meaning "red".
The rhyme is connected with the fall of Robert Walpole's government in 1742, since Robin is a diminutive form of Robert and the first printing is close to the time of the events mentioned.

Who Killed Cock Robin? - Anon (in song)

Who killed Cock Robin?
I, said the Sparrow,
with my bow and arrow,
I killed Cock Robin.

Who saw him die?
I, said the Fly,
with my little teeny eye,
I saw him die.

Who caught his blood?
I, said the Fish,
with my little dish
I caught his blood.

Who'll make the shroud?
I, said the Beetle,
with my thread and needle,
I'll make the shroud.

Who'll dig his grave?
I, said the Owl,
with my pick and trowel,
I'll dig his grave.

Who'll be the parson?
I, said the Rook,
with my little book,
I'll be the parson.

Who'll be the clerk?
I, said the Lark,
if it's not in the dark,
I'll be the clerk.

Who'll carry the link?
I, said the Linnet,
I'll fetch it in a minute,
I'll carry the link.

Who'll be chief mourner?
I, said the Dove,
I mourn for my love,
I'll be chief mourner.

Who'll carry the coffin?
I, said the Kite,
if it's not through the night,
I'll carry the coffin.

Who'll bear the pall?
We, said the Wren,
both the cock and the hen,
We’ll bear the pall.

Who'll sing a psalm?
I, said the Thrush,
as she sat on a bush,
I'll sing a psalm.

Who'll toll the bell?
I, said the Bull,
because I can pull,
I'll toll the bell.

All the birds of the air
Fell a-sighing and a-sobbing,
When they heard the bell toll
For poor Cock Robin.

————————
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cock_Robin
"Who Killed Cock Robin" is an English-origin folk song and nursery rhyme...

The earliest record of the rhyme is in Tommy Thumb's Pretty Song Book, published in 1744, which noted only the first four verses. The extended version given below was printed c. 1770. 

The rhyme also has an alternative ending, in which the sparrow who killed Cock Robin is hanged for his crime. 

Several early versions picture a stocky, strong-billed bullfinch tolling the bell, which may have been the original intention of the rhyme.

Origin and meaning
Although the earliest known record of the song is from the mid-eighteenth century, there is some evidence that it is much older. The death of a robin by an arrow is depicted in a 15th-century stained glass window at Buckland Rectory, Gloucestershire.

A similar fragmentary rhyme appears in the collected grammatical miscellany of 15th-century schoolmaster, Thomas Schort, which reads:

Y say a sparw
Schotte an arow
By an harow
Into a barow

The rhyme is also similar to a poem, Phyllyp Sparowe, written by John Skelton about 1508, in which the narrator laments the death of his pet bird. The use of the rhyme 'owl' with 'shovel' could suggest that it was originally used in older middle English pronunciation. Versions of the story appear to exist in other countries, including Germany

A number of theories have been advanced to explain the meaning of the rhyme:

The rhyme records a mythological event, such as the death of the god Balder from Norse mythology, or the ritual sacrifice of a king figure, as proposed by early folklorists as in the 'Cutty Wren' theory of a 'pagan survival'.

It is a parody of the death of King William II, who was killed by an arrow while hunting in the New Forest (Hampshire) in 1100, and who was known as William Rufus, meaning "red".

The rhyme is connected with the fall of Robert Walpole's government in 1742, since Robin is a diminutive form of Robert and the first printing is close to the time of the events mentioned.

Who Killed Cock Robin?

Poem by Dylan Thomas

Do not go gentle into that good night,
Old age should burn and rave at close of day;
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Though wise men at their end know dark is right,
Because their words had forked no lightning they
Do not go gentle into that good night.

Good men, the last wave by, crying how bright
Their frail deeds might have danced in a green bay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Wild men who caught and sang the sun in flight,
And learn, too late, they grieved it on its way,
Do not go gentle into that good night.

Grave men, near death, who see with blinding sight
Blind eyes could blaze like meteors and be gay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

And you, my father, there on the sad height,
Curse, bless, me now with your fierce tears, I pray.
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

----------
My melody to the poem by Dylan Thomas
This is the first recording on the day it was written in the park.
This later with simple piano:
https://soundcloud.com/user-734457954/do-not-go-gentle-into-that-goodnight-dylan-thomas-in-song

Do not go gentle into that good night --- Dylan Thomas (in song)

Piping down the valleys wild 
Piping songs of pleasant glee 
On a cloud I saw a child. 
And he laughing said to me. 

Pipe a song about a Lamb; 
So I piped with merry chear, 
Piper pipe that song again— 
So I piped, he wept to hear. 

Drop thy pipe thy happy pipe 
Sing thy songs of happy chear, 
So I sung the same again 
While he wept with joy to hear 

Piper sit thee down and write 
In a book that all may read— 
So he vanish'd from my sight. 
And I pluck'd a hollow reed. 

And I made a rural pen, 
And I stain'd the water clear, 
And I wrote my happy songs 
Every child may joy to hear

------------------
My melody to a poem by William Blake
Piper Pipe 6last

Introduction to Songs of Innocence - Piping down the valleys wild

This poem is for my brother Bruce 
(Charles Wolfe addressed his poem 'To Mary')

IF I had thought thou couldst have died,
        I might not weep for thee;
But I forgot, when by thy side,
        That thou couldst mortal be:
It never through my mind had past
        The time would e'er be o'er,
And I on thee should look my last,
        And thou shouldst smile no more!

And still upon that face I look,
        And think 'twill smile again;
And still the thought I will not brook,
        That I must look in vain.
But when I speak—thou dost not say
        What thou ne'er left'st unsaid;
And now I feel, as well I may,
        Sweet Mary, thou art dead!

If thou wouldst stay, e'en as thou art,
        All cold and all serene—
I still might press thy silent heart,
        And where thy smiles have been.
While e'en thy chill, bleak corse I have,
        Thou seemest still mine own;
But there—I lay thee in thy grave,
        And I am now alone!

I do not think, where'er thou art,
        Thou hast forgotten me;
And I, perhaps, may soothe this heart
        In thinking too of thee:
Yet there was round thee such a dawn
        Of light ne'er seen before,
As fancy never could have drawn,
        And never can restore!
------------------------

30/7/18
"In the night I was making a prayer to my guardian angel, when I felt the arrival of another spirit. I felt immediately it was Bruce, but wondered if it was polite to interrupt my prayer to welcome him. Immediately the answer came back, of course, and I thought perhaps the angel had facilitated it. Bruce gave me a hug. It felt somehow as though our two spirits were merging for a moment. It was comforting and tearful. Afterwards I said thanks to both. and quickly fell asleep."

18/4/20
"I was tired going to bed. A minute or two after closing my eyes, Bruce appeared before me. His face filled the screen of my vision and, perhaps, also or later, the top of his body. I can’t describe the look on his face. It was one I recognised and something more. He was simply present, no talking, smiling, or facial gestures of any kind. And immediately I felt my heart relaxing and that fragile feeling I’d had all day disappeared in a moment. I couldn’t keep the vision for long - I don’t know: 5 seconds, 10, I doubt 15. It made me happy."

To Bruce --- Charles Wolfe (To Mary)

This lunar beauty
Has no history
Is complete and early,
If beauty later
Bear any feature
It had a lover
And is another.

This like a dream
Keeps other time
And daytime is
The loss of this,
For time is inches
And the heart's changes
Where ghost has haunted
Lost and wanted.

But this was never
A ghost's endeavour
Nor finished this,
Was ghost at ease,
And till it pass
Love shall not near
The sweetness here
Nor sorrow take
His endless look.

--------------
My melody to a poem by WH Auden
(the first fine careless rapture)
wed2ndinchesbsc

This Lunar Beauty --- WH Auden (in song)

I have no name 
I am but two days old.— 
What shall I call thee? 
I happy am 
Joy is my name,— 
Sweet joy befall thee! 

Pretty joy! 
Sweet joy but two days old, 
Sweet joy I call thee; 
Thou dost smile. 
I sing the while 
Sweet joy befall thee. 

--------------------
My melody to poem by William Blake
Paired with Infant Sorrow: https://soundcloud.com/user-734457954/infant-sorrow-william-blake-in-song?si=4c4ff4bbe18e4a838fc0048be367dc40&utm_source=clipboard&utm_medium=text&utm_campaign=social_sharing

Infant Joy --- William Blake (in song)

Little Lamb who made thee 
         Dost thou know who made thee 
Gave thee life & bid thee feed. 
By the stream & o'er the mead; 
Gave thee clothing of delight, 
Softest clothing wooly bright; 
Gave thee such a tender voice, 
Making all the vales rejoice! 
         Little Lamb who made thee 
         Dost thou know who made thee 

         Little Lamb I'll tell thee, 
         Little Lamb I'll tell thee!
He is called by thy name, 
For he calls himself a Lamb: 
He is meek & he is mild, 
He became a little child: 
I a child & thou a lamb, 
We are called by his name. 
         Little Lamb God bless thee. 
         Little Lamb God bless thee.

------------------
My melody to poem by William Blake
6 Edlast
------------------
"Without contraries is no progression," wrote Blake, and his Songs of Innocence and Experience present some of these contraries. In the case of the 'Lamb' of 'Innocence', his opposite was the 'Tyger' from 'Experience' :
https://soundcloud.com/user-734457954/the-tyger

The Lamb --- William Blake (in song)

There was an old woman and she lived in the castle, Weela Weela Walyer.
There was an old woman and she lived in Walworth, down by the river Neckinger.
She had a baby three months old Weela Weela Walyer.
She had a baby three months old, down by the river Neckinger.
She had a penknife long and sharp Weela Weela Walyer.
She had a penknife long and sharp, down by the river Neckinger.
She stuck the penknife in the baby’s heart Weela Weela Walyer.
She stuck the penknife in the baby’s heart, down by the river Neckinger.

3. Elephant Road
"I am a river to many peoples, as the old saying goes."
------------
My melody to words by Chris Roberts
Weela WW Studio18oct19Audx2sc

Weela Weela Walyer

Old Shad Thames is flowing where the watercress grows
Where my heart is I am going to my one wild rose.
The moment I meet her with a hug and kiss I’ll greet her,
There’s not a sort sweeter where the Shad Thames flows.

1. Sung by the Neck
"A tall dark-skinned woman points to the singer and addresses her friend: 'He’s properly hench, isn’t he Amy?'"

-------------------
My melody to a poem by Chris Roberts
1studio18octAud6to14sc

Old Shad Thames

I met my love at the Gallows dock,
Mill cranes and bodies sway.
An oh, the love I felt was a shock
Words could never say.
Took her sailing up my river,
Bermondsey was mine to give her.

2. St Mary’s Newington Churchyard
"I am elegant, stylish and musical, at my best with a guitar. Songs flow from me, sweet, bitter, happy and melancholy."

----------------------
My melody to words by Chris Roberts

Sung by the Neck

I Met my Love at the Gallows Dock

The arms of a bricklayer I gave her there,
as a ribbon for hair.
From New Kent Road to the Elephant,
cheek to cheek we stomped.
Her necklace made of the A2 overpass,
her loveliness was unsurpassed.
Kissed her again at Walworth Road,
it made our desires explode, Sweet Necker.

4. Paragon Gardens
"I sing canal shanties and marsh ballads, and I sing of the birds, the screaming jay, the booming bittern, the joyous call of the thrush and liquid warble of the blackbird. I conjure up great feathered armies that flew behind the plough. My audience soars and glides up and away, transported by my exquisite vocals… It is hard to know the extent to which I’ve reached the beautiful Sashley."
--------------------
My melody to words by Chris Roberts

The Arms of the Bricklayer

At Spa Gardens I held her hand,
At Jamaica Road I faced her.
At the Tabard Park I kissed her mouth,
And tenderly embraced her.
Heard the bells of St Mary’s ringing,
All the time, my heart was singing.

5. Tabard Gardens
Enforced separation by prison, exile or employment runs deep with people here, they are in a sense transient and I sing of eternity, I sing of place and belonging to it.

As I belt out the songs of jail, crime, hurt and injustice I spot plump Amy lolling with a group of friends but no Sashley. Where can she be?

-----------------
My melody to words by Chris Roberts
AtSpaGardens stuMar1febpmarx2

At Spa Gardens

Father, father, where are you going
       O do not walk so fast.
Speak father, speak to your little boy
       Or else I shall be lost,

The night was dark no father was there
       The child was wet with dew.
The mire was deep, & the child did weep
       And away the vapour flew.

------------
My melody to poem by William Blake
Fri Pksc

The Little Boy Lost --- William Blake (in song)

The little boy lost in the lonely fen,
Led by the wand'ring light,
Began to cry, but God ever nigh,
Appeard like his father in white.

He kissed the child & by the hand led
And to his mother brought,
Who in sorrow pale, thro' the lonely dale
Her little boy weeping sought

------------------
My melody to poem by William Blake
2 Studioct26sc

The Little Boy Found --- William Blake in song

In futurity
I prophesy
That the earth from sleep
(Grave the sentence deep)

Shall arise, and seek
For her Maker meek;
And the desert wild
Become a garden mild.
--------
In the southern clime,
Where the summer’s prime
Never fades away,
Lovely Lyca lay.

Seven summers old
Lovely Lyca told.
She had wandered long,
Hearing wild birds’ song.

‘Sweet sleep, come to me,
Underneath this tree;
Do father, mother, weep?
Where can Lyca sleep?

‘Lost in desert wild
Is your little child.
How can Lyca sleep
If her mother weep?

‘If her heart does ache,
Then let Lyca wake;
If my mother sleep,
Lyca shall not weep.

‘Frowning, frowning night,
O’er this desert bright
Let thy moon arise,
While I close my eyes.’

Sleeping Lyca lay,
While the beasts of prey,
Come from caverns deep,
Viewed the maid asleep.

The kingly lion stood,
And the virgin viewed:
Then he gambolled round
O’er the hallowed ground.

Leopards, tigers, play
Round her as she lay;
While the lion old
Bowed his mane of gold,

And her bosom lick,
And upon her neck,
From his eyes of flame,
Ruby tears there came;

While the lioness
Loosed her slender dress,
And naked they conveyed
To caves the sleeping maid.

------------------
My melody to poem by William Blake
3 2nd[noInF]
-------------------
The Little Girl Found
https://soundcloud.com/user-734457954/the-little-girl-found

The Little Girl Lost --- (William Blake in song)

Love, meet me in the green glen, 
Beside the tall elm-tree, 
Where the sweetbriar smells so sweet agen; 
There come with me. 
Meet me in the green glen.

Meet me at the sunset 
Down in the green glen, 
Where we’ve often met 
By hawthorn-tree and foxes’ den, 
Meet me in the green glen.

Meet me in the green glen, 
By sweetbriar bushes there; 
Meet me by your own sen, 
Where the wild thyme blossoms fair. 
Meet me in the green glen.

Meet me by the sweetbriar, 
By the mole-hill swelling there; 
When the west glows like a fire 
God’s crimson bed is there. 
Meet me in the green glen.

----------------
My first melody for John Clare's poem
6May10 1stv 2ndedsc

Love meet me in the Green Glen _ v1 --- John Clare

Hear the voice of the Bard! 
Who Present, Past, & Future sees 
Whose ears have heard, 
The Holy Word, 
That walk'd among the ancient trees. 

Calling the lapsed Soul 
And weeping in the evening dew: 
That might controll, 
The starry pole; 
And fallen fallen light renew! 

O Earth O Earth return! 
Arise from out the dewy grass; 
Night is worn, 
And the morn 
Rises from the slumberous mass. 

Turn away no more: 
Why wilt thou turn away 
The starry floor 
The watry shore 
Is giv'n thee till the break of day. 

----------------
My melody to a poem by William Blake

[Fri 3edsc]

Introduction to Songs of Experience - Hear The Voice Of The Bard (in song)

I wander thro' each charter'd street,
Near where the charter'd Thames does flow. 
And mark in every face I meet
Marks of weakness, marks of woe.

In every cry of every Man,
In every Infants cry of fear,
In every voice: in every ban,
The mind-forg'd manacles I hear

How the Chimney-sweepers cry
Every blackning Church appalls, 
And the hapless Soldiers sigh
Runs in blood down Palace walls

But most thro' midnight streets I hear
How the youthful Harlots curse
Blasts the new-born Infants tear 
And blights with plagues the Marriage hearse

-----------------
My melody to William Blake's poem
Firstune Studio 18octAud1stsc
Alternative/additional melody: https://soundcloud.com/user-734457954/london-william-blake-in-song

London ---- William Blake (in song v2)

I caught this morning morning's minion, king-
dom of daylight's dauphin, dapple-dawn-drawn Falcon, in his riding
Of the rolling level underneath him steady air, and striding
High there, how he rung upon the rein of a wimpling wing
In his ecstasy! then off, off forth on swing,
As a skate's heel sweeps smooth on a bow-bend: the hurl and gliding
Rebuffed the big wind. My heart in hiding
Stirred for a bird, – the achieve of, the mastery of the thing!

Brute beauty and valour and act, oh, air, pride, plume, here
Buckle! AND the fire that breaks from thee then, a billion
Times told lovelier, more dangerous, O my chevalier!

No wonder of it: shéer plód makes plough down sillion
Shine, and blue-bleak embers, ah my dear,
Fall, gall themselves, and gash gold-vermilion.

---------
My melody to Hopkins' poem - with bird chorus
Sep 10 Thur 3rd
------------
Link to a third version:
https://soundcloud.com/user-734457954/the-windhover-gm-hopkins-in-song?si=2f12c5105b0e45589f73cf610ad9502c&utm_source=clipboard&utm_medium=text&utm_campaign=social_sharing

The Windhover --- Gerard Manley Hopkins (in song, with bird chorus)

Take a
Few steps
Through the
City

Draw back 
The curtains 
Of self-
Pity

See the faces that go by
Each a mirror in a careless tide

Pushing out, 
Milling and 
Falling back
Jostling and joining 
The ocean again.

---

Heads bow, 
Hands hang
In submission
Feet drag 
And eyes droop 
In suspicion

Brooding stones suffocate all
Haunt of shades trapped by the piper’s call

What
Strange air 
Tempted the 
Wanderer there
Emptied his soul 
Of that nature it shared?

---

And I see myself 
In the faces that go by
Just a drop of spray
Trying hard to disown the tide

---

Look now 
Two people
Step from their
Two cars

Sit at
Two tables
At the 
Snack bar

Taking care not to intrude
Doing nothing not to be rude

Who
Can see
Over the rain
Can see
Over the pain
Parting us again?
--------------
Early song with guitar
Stkfewstps2c4vn

Through the City

I'm writing a song
To tell you my name
I'm writing a song
To try to explain
the place where we met
the things that were said
the moment I left 
Alone

All through the evening
We hid inside
We laughed and cried
We lived and died
And O my love, 
Seems so cold inside
And O -
Dreams can come true
This one could too 
With you.

I’ve written this song 
To tell you I care
I’m stringing along 
As if you were still there
The look on your face
The hint of embrace
And maybe a trace
Mmm of love

All through the evening
We hid inside
We laughed and cried
We lived and died
It seems
Just like a dream
And dreams
Sometimes come true
This one could too
With you, with you, with you

-------------------
Song with guitar
Swritasongc3altn

I'm Writing a Song

Gershwin (22) and Caesar wrote this song in about ten minutes on a bus in Manhattan, finishing it at Gershwin's apartment in 1919. 

The song had little impact in its first show, but soon after Al Jolson heard it at a party... "After that", said Gershwin, "Swanee penetrated the four corners of the earth." 

The song charted for 18 weeks - No. 1 for nine. It sold a million music sheets and two million records, becoming Gershwin's first hit and biggest-selling song.

Wikipedia
-----------------
My version is a distant cousin of the million-seller. Improvised and adapted in the moment with the wonderful Richard Link on piano, it is sharp and flat in all the wrong places, and carries (mournfully) the happiness of the session.

----------------------
For another Gershwin; https://soundcloud.com/user-734457954/summertime
And another interpretation of it: https://soundcloud.com/user-734457954/summertime-cover-2 

Swanjan611altgx3ps

Swanee

This bitter-sweet 1959 song is part of the last collaboration between Rodgers and Hammerstein.

This version is adapted and improvised in the moment with the wonderful Richard Link on piano. It is sharp and flat in unscheduled places, and carries some of the happiness of the session.

-------------------
Myfavthjan6edgx2

My Favourite Things

For the best experience, 
-  Click on the song's picture for words and notes.
-  in Album/Playlist/Spotlight, first click on the big picture to the left, then on the new page click the track title. Really, it's worth the effort :) 

With Blake you will see his painting too. Each picture is in dialogue with the words (not just illustrating them).

Bards have combined music & poetry from earliest times. Many poets continue the connection, not least William Blake. But often their melodies are lost or neglected.

Ian

Pinned to spotlight

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