Blog PostsFriends | BlogThe Stolen Child by W.B YeatsWhere dips the rocky highland Of Sleuth Wood in the lake, There lies a leafy island Where flapping herons wake The drowsy water rats; There we've hid our faery vats, Full of berrys And of reddest stolen cherries. Come away, O human child! To the waters and the wild With a faery, hand in hand, For the world's more full of weeping than you can understand. Where the wave of moonlight glosses The dim gray sands with light, Far off by furthest Rosses We foot it all the night, Weaving olden dances Mingling hands and mingling glances Till the moon has taken flight; To and fro we leap And chase the frothy bubbles, While the world is full of troubles And anxious in its sleep. Come away, O human child! To the waters and the wild With a faery, hand in hand, For the world's more full of weeping than you can understand. Where the wandering water gushes From the hills above Glen-Car, In pools among the rushes That scarce could bathe a star, We seek for slumbering trout And whispering in their ears Give them unquiet dreams; Leaning softly out From ferns that drop their tears Over the young streams. Come away, O human child! To the waters and the wild With a faery, hand in hand, For the world's more full of weeping than you can understand. Away with us he's going, The solemn-eyed: He'll hear no more the lowing Of the calves on the warm hillside Or the kettle on the hob Sing peace into his breast, Or see the brown mice bob Round and round the oatmeal chest. For he comes, the human child, To the waters and the wild With a faery, hand in hand, For the world's more full of weeping than he can understand. Fiddlers Green by Gordon Downie / Gordon Sinclair / Johnny Fay / Paul Langlois / Robert BakerSeptember seventeenFor a girl I know it's Mother's Day Her son has gone alee And that's where he will stay Wind on the weathervane Tearing blue eyes sailor-mean As Falstaff sings a sorrowful refrain For a boy in Fiddler's Green His tiny knotted heart Well, I guess it never worked too good The timber tore apart And the water gorged the wood You can hear her whispered prayer For men at masts that always lean The same wind that moves her hair Moves a boy through Fiddler's Green Oh, nothing's changed anyway Oh, nothing's changed anyway Oh, anytime today He doesn't know a soul There's nowhere that he's really been But he won't travel long alone No, not in Fiddler's Green Balloons all filled with rain As children's eyes turn sleepy-mean And Falstaff sings a sorrowful refrain For a boy in Fiddler's Green This song was added to the band Tragically Hip's album "Roadapples" after frontman Gord Downie's nephew died of a heart defect at age 5. It has a poetically nautical theme, referring to "Fiddler's Green", the mythical afterlife of sailors, where there is everlasting happiness and music. Gordon Downie would later pass away due to brain cancer. Dedicated to the memory of my nephew Noah. Northwest Passage written and sung by Stan RogersAh, for just one time I would take the Northwest Passage To find the hand of Franklin reaching for the Beaufort Sea Tracing one warm line through a land so wild and savage And make a Northwest Passage to the sea Westward from the Davis Strait 'tis there 'twas said to lie The sea route to the Orient for which so many died Seeking gold and glory, leaving weathered, broken bones And a long-forgotten lonely cairn of stones Ah, for just one time I would take the Northwest Passage To find the hand of Franklin reaching for the Beaufort Sea Tracing one warm line through a land so wild and savage And make a Northwest Passage to the sea Three centuries thereafter, I take passage overland In the footsteps of brave Kelsey, where his Sea of Flowers began Watching cities rise before me, then behind me sink again This tardiest explorer, driving hard across the plain Ah, for just one time I would take the Northwest Passage To find the hand of Franklin reaching for the Beaufort Sea Tracing one warm line through a land so wild and savage And make a Northwest Passage to the sea And through the night, behind the wheel, the mileage clicking west I think upon Mackenzie, David Thompson and the rest Who cracked the mountain ramparts and did show a path for me To race the roaring Fraser to the sea Ah, for just one time I would take the Northwest Passage To find the hand of Franklin reaching for the Beaufort Sea Tracing one warm line through a land so wild and savage And make a Northwest Passage to the sea How then am I so different from the first men through this way? Like them, I left a settled life, I threw it all away To seek a Northwest Passage at the call of many men To find there but the road back home again Ah, for just one time I would take the Northwest Passage To find the hand of Franklin reaching for the Beaufort Sea Tracing one warm line through a land so wild and savage And make a Northwest Passage to the sea YouTube This song is said to be Canada's unofficial second national anthem. An allegory of a man exploring his country as like the early explorers and pioneers. Stan Rogers was a star of Canadian folk music, but was taken too soon in a plane fire in Hebron Kentucky at age 33 Rain by Don PatersonI love all films that start with rain:rain, braiding a windowpane or darkening a hung-out dress or streaming down her upturned face; one long thundering downpour right through the empty script and score before the act, before the blame, before the lens pulls through the frame to where the woman sits alone beside a silent telephone or the dress lies ruined on the grass or the girl walks off the overpass, and all things flow out from that source along their fatal watercourse. However bad or overlong such a film can do no wrong, so when his native twang shows through or when the boom dips into view or when her speech starts to betray its adaptation from the play, I think to when we opened cold on a rain-dark gutter, running gold with the neon of a drugstore sign, and I’d read into its blazing line: forget the ink, the milk, the blood— all was washed clean with the flood we rose up from the falling waters the fallen rain’s own sons and daughters and none of this, none of this matters. I Am a Rock by Simon and GarfunkelA winter's dayIn a deep and dark December I am alone Gazing from my window to the streets below On a freshly fallen silent shroud of snow I am a rock I am an island I've built walls A fortress deep and mighty That none may penetrate I have no need of friendship, friendship causes pains It's laughter and it's loving I disdain I am a rock I am an island Don't talk of love Well I've heard the word before It's sleeping in my memory I won't disturb the slumber of feelings that have died If I never loved I never would have cried I am a rock I am an island I have my books And my poetry to protect me I am shielded in my armor Hiding in my room safe within my womb I touch no one and no one touches me I am a rock I am an island And a rock feels no pain And an island never cries Lies composed and sung by Stan RogersAt last the kids are gone now for the dayShe reaches for the coffee as the school bus pulls away Another day to tend the house and plan For Friday at the Legion when she's dancing with her man Sure was a bitter winter but Friday will be fine And maybe last year's Easter dress will serve her one more time She'd pass for twenty nine but for her eyes But winter lines are telling wicked lies All lies, all those lines are telling wicked lies Lies, all lies. Too many lines there in that face Too many to erase or to disguise, they must be telling lies Is this the face that won for her the man Whose amazed and clumsy fingers put that ring upon her hand No need to search that mirror for the years The menace in their message shouts across the blur of tears So this is beauty's finish! Like Rodin's "Belle Heaulmie're" The pretty maiden trapped inside the ranch wife's toil and care Well, after seven kids, that's no surprise But why cannot her mirror tell her lies All lies, all those lines are telling wicked lies Lies, all lies. Too many lines there in that face Too many to erase or to disguise, they must be telling lies Then she shakes off the bitter web she wove And turns to set the mirror, gently, face down by the stove She gathers up her apron in her hand Pours a cup of coffee, drips Carnation from the can And thinks ahead to Friday, 'cause Friday will be fine! She'll look up in that weathered face that loves hers, line for line To see that maiden shining in his eyes And laugh at how her mirror tells her lies All lies, all those lines are telling wicked lies Lies, all lies. Too many lines there in that face Too many to erase or to disguise, they must be telling lies I think this one of the most romantic songs ever written. About a husband and wife who love eachother just as much after years as they did as newlyweds. To a Child Dancing in the Wind by W.B. YeatsDance there upon the shore;What need have you to care For wind or water's roar? And tumble out your hair That the salt drops have wet; Being young you have not known The fool's triumph, nor yet Love lost as soon as won, Nor the best labourer dead And all the sheaves to bind. What need have you to dread The monstrous crying of wind! Tree and Sky by Siegried SasoonLet my soul, a shining tree,Silver branches lift towards thee, Where on a hallowed winter’s night The clear-eyed angels may alight. And if there should be tempests in My spirit, let them surge like din Of noble melodies at war; With fervour of such blades of triumph as are Flashed in white orisons of saints who go On shafts of glory to the ecstasies they know. Let Me Not To the Marriage of True Minds (sonnet 116)by William Shakespeare 6Let me not to the marriage of true mindsAdmit impediments. Love is not love Which alters when it alteration finds, Or bends with the remover to remove. O no! it is an ever-fixed mark That looks on tempests and is never shaken; It is the star to every wand’ring bark, Whose worth’s unknown, although his height be taken. Love’s not Time’s fool, though rosy lips and cheeks Within his bending sickle’s compass come; Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks, But bears it out even to the edge of doom. If this be error and upon me proved, I never writ, nor no man ever loved. Into My Heart an Air That Kills by AE HousmanInto my heart an air that killsFrom yon far country blows: What are those blue remembered hills, What spires, what farms are those? That is the land of lost content, I see it shining plain, The happy highways where I went And cannot come again. |