So here’s a preview of the first two verses:

Ode to a Nightingalepreview2

Here’s the first two lines again but different:

FirstlinereviseOdeNight

I’ve been playing with violin, viola, cello and flute which all sound good, but I keep coming back to the bare bones creation. What can I say!

Thank you,  John for this beautiful poem. I hope you like what I’m doing with it.

Ode to a Nightingale is finally pulling together.  I’m getting very close to beginning the recording process.  My first reaction to putting this great work to music was a bit overwhelming. But patient, inching progress has led to something I think will be very nice and fitting of the great sentiments.

My favorite part: “Was it a vision or a waking dream? Fled is that music-do I wake or sleep?”  (The very last lines)

Of course I love the whole poem. I hope you will like what I’m doing with it.

I’m already working on Ode to a Nightingale and some other great poems.

Thanks for checking it out!

The video is here.

Michael Head

One guitar, three voices and some bass at the end.

My hope is that the music fits the poem and that I’ve done well enough for now with this first version. It’s been a long time coming!

La Belle Dame Sans Merci Keats

Last verse:

“And this is why I sojourn here,
Alone and palely loitering,
Though the sedge is wither’d from the lake,
And no birds sing.”

http://www.blogtalkradio.com/onlinewithandrea/2009/09/22/One-Love-for-Music-with-Lee-Waterworth

Check out the time for your time zone and register with Blog Talk Radio so you can join everyone in the chat room. If you can’t make it for the live show you can listen to the archive any time.

It is a great honor for me to have my music included on this wonderful show!

Hope to see you there!

Here’s something I hope you’ll enjoy while I work on Waiting(Burroughs) and Song of Wandering Aengus(Yeats)

I especially like the harmonizing at the end!

Rumors form an Aeolian Harp
Henry David Thoreau

There is a vale which none hath seen,
Where foot of man has never been,
Such as here lives with toil and strife,
An anxious and a sinful life.

There every virtue has its birth,
Ere it descends upon the earth,
And thither every deed returns,
Which in the generous bosom burns.

There love is warm, and youth is young,
And poetry is yet unsung.
For Virtue still adventures there,
And freely breathes her native air.

And ever, if you hearken well,
You still may hear its vesper bell,
And tread of high-souled men go by,
Their thoughts conversing with the sky

John Burroughs

I’m still working on the final version of John Burroughs poem “Waiting.” So far there is guitar and three voices  a la Crosby, Stills and Nash or so I’ve been told! Yet I thought that was a great compliment!

This poem interested me in that I feel Burroughs has connected with an eternal truth which is in essence:  what is mine shall come to me.  In it he seems to say accept who you are and from that acceptance your life will unfold as it should and all that is required will come in it’s perfect time.  He points toward the natural synchronicity of nature and life and the co-ordination of the inner and outer expressions of life.

Burroughs was a nature enthusiast and writer along the lines of Thoreau, Emerson and Whitman.

In the words of his biographer Edward Renehan, Burroughs’s special identity was less that of a scientific naturalist than that of  “a literary naturalist with a duty to record his own unique perceptions of the natural world.” (from Wikipedia)

It is a great honor and joy to conect with these great writers through music. I hope I serve the ideas they brought to light in a way that enhances and enlivens the written words.

Here’s the poem.  Waiting by John Burroughs

John Burroughs Association

Songs of mine that are related to these ideas:  From the Morning Sun CD: Morning Sun,  Love’s Song from the Forest, Love Only Comes. From the SINGular mOMent CD:  Butterfly

The lulu edition of MOrning Sun has an axtra bonus track:  “Rumors from an Aeolian Harp” by Henry David Thoreau. Check it out!

Shaman’s Hand for May 3rd:  44th Episode!

May 3rd:  Pete Seeger’s 90th Borthday!

Tucson Folk Festival May2 and 3

Songs I’m working on:

Tiger!Tiger!         William Blake

The Song of the Wandering Aengus      W. B. Yeats