Song

To sailors, all nature is brimming with grand

Ideas – with thought and emotion;

I pity the dunces who can't understand

The song of the earth, sky and ocean.

I cannot sing the song of the humpback whale or dance the dance of the bees, but no matter. I know who I am.

Sing a song of sixpence,
A pocket full of rye,
Four and twenty blackbirds,
Baked in a pie;
When the pie was opened,
The birds began to sing;
Wasn't that a dainty dish
To set before a king?

The king was in his countinghouse
Counting out his money;
The queen was in the parlor
Eating bread and honey;
The maid was in the garden
Hanging out the clothes,
Along came a blackbird,
And snipped off her nose.

~~~

Just a song at twilight
When the lights are low
And the flickering shadows
Softly come and go.

Though the heart be weary
Sad the day and long
Still to us at twilight
Comes love's old sweet song.

~~~

'Just a song at twilight, when the lights are low'. Pity they didn't remember that Victorian line in 1914. Instead, 'the lights went out all over Europe' (as unmusically remarked by Lord Grey) and a war of hatred and horror began. No songs, no tenderness – »And each slow dusk a drawing down of blinds« (Wilfred Owen – dead in the trenches).

FAR I hear the bugle blow
To call me where I would not go,
And the guns begin the song,
“Soldier, fly or stay for long.”

A.E.Housman