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Posts Tagged ‘Song’

The Wild Swans At Coole – Song Of The Day #15

Posted on 8 Sep 2017

Week 3 of Song Of The day is going to be poetry. We’ll start with this one from my Whorls album. Very autumnal lyrics.This recording incorporates some electric guitar sounds I’ve been developing over the last few years in various gigs with poets and authors.

lyrics by WB Yeats

THE WILD SWANS AT COOLE

The trees are in their autumn beauty,
The woodland paths are dry,
Under the October twilight the water
Mirrors a still sky;
Upon the brimming water among the stones
Are nine-and-fifty swans.

The nineteenth autumn has come upon me
Since I first made my count;
I saw, before I had well finished,
All suddenly mount
And scatter wheeling in great broken rings
Upon their clamorous wings.

I have looked upon those brilliant creatures,
And now my heart is sore.
All’s changed since I, hearing at twilight,
The first time on this shore,
The bell-beat of their wings above my head,
Trod with a lighter tread.

Unwearied still, lover by lover,
They paddle in the cold
Companionable streams or climb the air;
Their hearts have not grown old;
Passion or conquest, wander where they will,
Attend upon them still.

But now they drift on the still water,
Mysterious, beautiful;
Among what rushes will they build,
By what lake’s edge or pool
Delight men’s eyes when I awake some day
To find they have flown away?

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The Player Queen – Song Of The Day 5

Posted on 29 Aug 2017

Here’s a version of a song from my Whorls album, recorded last Saturday at the Live Stream Concert, in which I turned W.B. Yeats poems into songs. Your guess is as good as mine when it comes to what this is about! It was part of a show with Everlasting Voices, which went to Tokyo and Hyderabad, India. Both of those trips were extraordinary for me and great experiences. Have you a favourite Yeats poem that I mightn’t know of? Here’s the poem.

MY mother dandled me and sang,
‘How young it is, how young! ‘
And made a golden cradle
That on a willow swung.
‘He went away,’ my mother sang,
‘When I was brought to bed,’
And all the while her needle pulled
The gold and silver thread.
She pulled the thread and bit the thread
And made a golden gown,
And wept because she had dreamt that I
Was born to wear a crown.
‘When she was got,’ my mother sang,
I heard a sea-mew cry,
And saw a flake of the yellow foam
That dropped upon my thigh.’
How therefore could she help but braid
The gold into my hair,
And dream that I should carry
The golden top of care?

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