A cover of this great song, played by Cavendish - Peter Rechsteiner and Rob Noordeloos.

James Taylor - You've Got A Friend

We buried him high on a windy hill,  
But his soul went out to sea. 
 I know, for I heard, when all was still, 
His sea-soul say to me:

Put no tombstone at my head, 
 For here I do not make my bed. 
Strew no flowers on my grave,
 I’ve gone back to the wind and wave.  
Do not, do not weep for me, 
For I am happy with my sea.

------------
My melody to Hughes' words
stuapr6 4-14sc
------------------
https://sites.williams.edu/searchablesealit/h/hughes-langston/
HUGHES, [JAMES MERCER] LANGSTON (1902-1967). Langston Hughes, the prolific African American writer whose work in multiple genres endeared him early in his career to the black American community and later to a broad, international readership, first prepared to set sail in 1922, when he signed on as a messboy aboard the freighter West Hassayampa. Hughes’ romantic vision of exploring the world as a sailor was shattered, however, when he discovered that the rusty ship he had climbed aboard was bound for nowhere. Towed up the Hudson River to Jones Point, where it was moored among a large group of decommissioned World War I freighters, the West Hassayampa merely served as a mother ship and quarters for a crew charged with maintaining the other idle freighters. 

Although Hughes found his first “experience at sea” somewhat embarrassing, life at Jones Point was nevertheless beneficial to his creative processes; he completed numerous poems, and the experience is humorously recaptured in the first volume of his autobiography, The Big Sea (1940). 

Armed with letters of recommendation from his superiors that testified to his abilities on shipboard, Hughes left Jones Point in 1923 and signed on to the West Hesseltine, bound for Africa. Hughes viewed this departure to sea symbolically: upon leaving the shore, he was also casting off painful memories of his past, such as his experiences with segregation at Columbia University, his many arguments with his father, the poverty of his childhood, and the day-to-day angers generated by racial prejudice. 

He was also leaving behind the romantic world of books, which had sustained him as a youth in lieu of actual experiences at sea. Fittingly, as the West Hesseltine moved past Sandy Hook on the New Jersey shore, Hughes cast overboard the books he had brought on the ship, saving, according to his biographer, only one: Walt Whitman’s Leaves of Grass (1855).

Death of an Old Seaman - Langston Hughes (in song)

We lived north of the future, days opened
letters with a child’s signature, a raspberry, a page of sky. 

My grandmother threw tomatoes
from her balcony, she pulled imagination like a blanket            
over my head. I painted
my mother’s face. She understood
loneliness, hid the dead in the earth like partisans.
 
The night undressed us (I counted
its pulse) my mother danced, she filled the past
with peaches, casseroles. At this, my doctor laughed,
    his granddaughter
touched my eyelid – I kissed  
                                                            
the back of her knee. The city trembled,
a ghost-ship setting sail.
And my classmate invented twenty names for Jew.
He was an angel, he had no name,
we wrestled, yes. My grandfathers fought

the German tanks on tractors, I kept a suitcase full
of Brodsky’s poems. The city trembled,
a ghost-ship setting sail. 
At night, I woke to whisper: yes, we lived. 
We lived, yes, don’t say it was a dream. 

At the local factory, my father
took a handful of snow, put it in my mouth.
The sun began a routine narration,
whitening their bodies: mother, father dancing, moving
as the darkness spoke behind them.
It was April. The sun washed the balconies, April. 

I retell the story the light etches
into my hand: Little book, go to the city without me.
-----------
My melody to Kaminsky's words: 2-3
https://www.ilyakaminsky.com
Pic by Henn Kim
------------
This sung-poem had an unusual start, perhaps synchronistic, wu wei, ‘in tune’. 

I wandered into the book shop with no clear aim, except to stop by the poetry corner. Felt tired. One book, longer than the others, its black spine standing out, insisted on being read. I objected to wasting time and energy; it wasn't for me, but it insisted: ‘Starry Night, Blurry Dreams’ by HENN KIM (in capitals). As I opened it, a new song started over the shop speakers: ‘Starry Starry Night’. I was…gobsmacked. What could it mean? A line of poetry on one page accompanied a drawing on the other. Good - but still, not for me. I looked either side of the book. One had Milk and Honey by poet Rupi Kaur I'd been recommended just a few days before. The other had a slim book I didn't know: Dancing in Odessa. It might work with song. I had to do something with this synch. 

On the way to the cashier, another song began over the shop speakers: Do you want to know a secret? Of course I do. An early Beatles song, but with an ethereal quality moving it to another zone. The cashier shazammed and said it was Fairground Attraction. Following her brought me to the music section, where three books called and were answered.

With all this magic in the air, I looked forward to the poems. Oh but where was there anything to put into song? The critics all raved about its musicality, but I saw only musical phrases, not verses. So I just spoke a poem in the train. Then as certain rhythms of words and phrases arose so did the idea of song without verses. It was evening; the platform was empty, and I recorded.

Dancing In Odessa - Ilya Kaminsky (in song)

Angelia D. Angel - Millions Of Years Still Love You

Lara St. John (Violine), Anna Prohaska (Sopran), Ludwig Quandt (Cello) and Marie-Pierre Langlamet (Harfe) present new CD with chamber music by Schubert. CD release is on March 13th. Also live on April 29th at the Berlin Philharmonic.

Schubert "Gretchen Am Spinnrade"

A Farewell A.Tennyson

Warm - (Piano Only Instrumental)

Novo Começo

I must go down to the seas again, to the lonely sea and the sky,
And all I ask is a tall ship and a star to steer her by;
And the wheel’s kick and the wind’s song and the white sail’s shaking,
And a grey mist on the sea’s face, and a grey dawn breaking.
 
I must go down to the seas again, for the call of the running tide
Is a wild call and a clear call that may not be denied;
And all I ask is a windy day with the white clouds flying,
And the flung spray and the blown spume, and the sea-gulls crying.
 
I must go down to the seas again, to the vagrant gypsy life,
To the gull’s way and the whale’s way where the wind’s like a whetted knife;
And all I ask is a merry yarn from a laughing fellow-rover,
And quiet sleep and a sweet dream when the long trick’s over.

—————————
My melody to Masefield’s words
Soundtrack by Jack Always: https://soundcloud.com/jackalways 
Portrait by Rudolf Sauter
Seafever7 stuapr11
—————————-
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salt-Water_Poems_and_Ballads 
"Sea-Fever" first appeared in Salt-Water Ballads – Masefield's first volume of poetry, published in 1902. It  has been set to music by many composers, including John Coventry, on his EP "The Roots of Folk Volume 2" and Patrick Clifford on his album American Wake. The most famous version is by John Ireland...
————————
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Masefield
John Edward Masefield (1June1878 – 12May1967) was an English poet and writer. He was Poet Laureate from 1930 until his death in 1967, during which time he lived at Burcot in Oxfordshire. Among his best known works are the children's novels The Midnight Folk and The Box of Delights, and the poems "The Everlasting Mercy" and "Sea-Fever". Shortly after his death his house burned down and was later replaced by a Cheshire Home named after him.

Biography Early life
Masefield was born in Ledbury in Herefordshire to George Masefield, a solicitor, and his wife Caroline (née Parker)…His mother died giving birth to his sister when Masefield was six, and he went to live with his aunt. His father died soon afterwards, following a mental breakdown.

After an unhappy education at the King's School in Warwick..., where he was a boarder between 1888 and 1891, he left to board HMS Conway [age13], both to train for a life at sea and to break his addiction to reading, of which his aunt thought little. He spent several years aboard this ship, and found that he could spend much of his time reading and writing. It was aboard the Conway that Masefield's love of story-telling grew. While he was on the ship, he listened to the stories told about sea lore, continued to read, and decided that he was to become a writer and story-teller himself. Masefield gives an account of life aboard the Conway in his book New Chum…

In 1894 Masefield boarded the Gilcruix, destined for Chile... his record of his experiences while sailing through extreme weather shows his delight in seeing flying fish, porpoises and birds. He was awed by the beauty of nature, including a rare sighting of a nocturnal rainbow, on this voyage... 

In 1895 Masefield returned to sea on a windjammer destined for New York City. However, the urge to become a writer and the hopelessness of life as a sailor overtook him, and in New York he jumped ship and travelled throughout the countryside. For several months he lived as a vagrant, drifting between odd jobs, before he returned to New York City and found work as a barkeeper's assistant. Some time around Christmas 1895, he read the December edition of Truth, a New York periodical, which contained the poem "The Piper of Arll" by Duncan Campbell Scott. Ten years later, Masefield wrote to Scott to tell him what reading that poem had meant to him:

I had never (till that time) cared very much for poetry, but your poem impressed me deeply, and set me on fire. Since then poetry has been the one deep influence in my life, and to my love of poetry I owe all my friends, and the position I now hold…

Sea Fever - John Masefield (in song)

Leonard Cohen and Judy Collins - Hey That's No Way To Say Goodbye

Produced by Bertrand Belin and Fiodor Dream Dog 
Music : Fiodor Dream Dog / Lyrics : Poem by Henry James Leigh Hunt 
Record by Nicolas Delbart (except personal music recorded by Ludovic Palabaud) at Le Snark
Mixed by Eric Spring at Le Snark 
Master by Chab at Translab

Art direction by Fiodor Dream Dog
Publishing by Fabrice Absil 

© La Gosse Productions / Fiodor Dream Dog 

Fiodor Dream Dog — Jenny Kissed Me

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.

Sea Fever - John Masefield (in song)

Ian

Related tracks