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"It Was a Very Good Year"

 
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Here at Sometimes a Song I’ve often commented that the great flowering of American popular music in the mid-twentieth century came about as a result of the convergence of talents and circumstances, and sometimes of hardship or happenstance. This week’s selection is an example of such a song.

“It Was a Very Good Year” was far from the first song written by Ervin Drake, a man who was very well known behind the musical scenes in the 1950’s and 1960’s for the music he produced in television, particularly in television specials for a list of big stars as long as your arm. Born in 1919, Drake grew up in Manhattan, where he worked on many varsity shows as a student at City College of New York, while earning a degree in social science. But three decades elapsed — not to mention a whole career in popular music — between his earning his degree in Social Science in 1936 and his taking a formal music degree at Julliard in the mid-1960’s. Drake was among the early group of inductees into the Songwriter’s Hall of Fame, after its institution by the very great songwriter, Johnny Mercer.

Drake knew his music long before attended Julliard, but he was a clever lyricist as well, and in the 1940’s had some success with setting English lyrics to Latin American tunes, when the popularity of Latin music was on the rise in the English-speaking world. I had to laugh when I discovered that Drake was the composer and lyricist of a song that my father always loved, a big hit for a now mostly forgotten singer called Eddie Howard. Howard is best remembered for his rendition an American standard called “To Each His Own.” But that wasn’t Drake’s song. Nope, the one he wrote that my dad heard and loved as a kid was “The Rickety Rickshaw Man. I just this minute listened to that little novelty piece and had a moment of time-transport to my father’s childhood in 1946 when the song was a hit. Then I jumped forward a couple of decades to my own childhood, when I learned that Drake had written the English lyrics for another Latin American tune which became a big hit for Engelbert Humperdinck in 1968. That song, which I recall hearing on the airwaves myself, was a Bossa Nova called, “Quando, Quando, Quando?”

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So even though I had never heard of Ervin Drake before I began to research our song for this week, I had indeed heard his music, and no doubt anyone who watched television or listened to radio any time during the 1940’s through the 1970’s has as well. Drake wrote “It Was a Very Good Year” in 1961, at the request of his friend, music producer Artie Mogull, for the very popular Kingston Trio. Artie dropped this urgent request on Ervin, who went home and dashed off the song overnight so that Mogull could present it the next day to the trio’s lead singer, Bob Shane. Shane was looking for a good solo song to record for the group’s upcoming album. It appears that Ervin Drake had more than a few notes up his musical sleeve to be magician enough to pull this song out of his hat. Abracadabra!
Is there more to our song today? Well, of course. Bob Shane did record a very fine “straight” arrangement of “It Was a Very Good Year” for the trio’s album, and although the song was released as a single, it didn’t make the charts. But tracks from the album were played over those ever-present air waves. And as it happened several years later, Frank Sinatra was driving home to his place in Palm Springs late one night. When you’re tired and have a long drive, what do you to to stay awake? You listen to the radio, of course. The story has it that when Frank heard the tune he immediately pulled into a gas station to call his producer (from a phone booth) to ask him to get an arrangement of the song “with lots of violins and maybe an oboe” right away. You see, Frank, then 50 years old, was working on a retrospective-style album, to be called “September of My Years.” “It Was a Very Good Year” might very well have been written FOR him, and I’m sure that many people thought it had been written for him. The song just needed the right arrangement and the Frank Sinatra touch to make it a great hit and one of his signature songs. And Frank’s instinct for the song was right. In 1966, “September of My Years” won the Grammy for Album of the Year. Frank won the Grammy for Best Male Vocal Performance. And “It Was a Very Good Year” won Best Instrumental Accompanying a Vocalist. And the competition at the Grammys was overwhelming that year, with music from “The Sound of Music,” “Mary Poppins,” and “Hello, Dolly!” in the running for the awards.

And how about the song’s “story”? Whose was that? Well Sinatra made it his own, by bringing out the melancholy in the lyrics, with the wistful tale of time passing from youth through adulthood and into later years. But it turns out that at the precise moment when Ervin Drake had been asked to write a song for Bob Shane (who was by no means advanced in HIS years), Ervin (then widowed) had just rediscovered an old flame from his own youth (a widow herself) and was about to be married again, in his 40’s, to his first love. He dedicated this song to her.

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So for today, I give you Frank Sinatra’s 1965 recording of “It Was a Very Good Year,” as well as the sweet 1961 version of the song by The Kingston Trio’s Bob Shane, and a rare recording-session video of The Voice himself putting down the track for this song. That last video is simply charming in more ways than I can list. And for the hardiest of our subscribers, I have also included (above) links to the Engelbert Humperdinck and Eddie Howard songs, too. Enjoy!

Please Share this Post

Word & Song by Anthony Esolen is an online magazine devoted to reclaiming the good, the beautiful, and the true. We publish six essays each week, on words, classic hymns, poems, films, and popular songs, as well a weekly podcast for paid subscribers, alternately Poetry Aloud or Anthony Esolen Speaks. Paid subscribers also receive audio-enhanced posts and on-demand access to our full archive, and may add their comments to our posts and discussions. To support this project, please join us as a free or paid subscriber. We value all of our subscribers, and we thank you for reading Word and Song!

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11 episoade

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Manage episode 460545430 series 3540370
Content provided by Anthony Esolen. All podcast content including episodes, graphics, and podcast descriptions are uploaded and provided directly by Anthony Esolen or their podcast platform partner. If you believe someone is using your copyrighted work without your permission, you can follow the process outlined here https://ro.player.fm/legal.

Here at Sometimes a Song I’ve often commented that the great flowering of American popular music in the mid-twentieth century came about as a result of the convergence of talents and circumstances, and sometimes of hardship or happenstance. This week’s selection is an example of such a song.

“It Was a Very Good Year” was far from the first song written by Ervin Drake, a man who was very well known behind the musical scenes in the 1950’s and 1960’s for the music he produced in television, particularly in television specials for a list of big stars as long as your arm. Born in 1919, Drake grew up in Manhattan, where he worked on many varsity shows as a student at City College of New York, while earning a degree in social science. But three decades elapsed — not to mention a whole career in popular music — between his earning his degree in Social Science in 1936 and his taking a formal music degree at Julliard in the mid-1960’s. Drake was among the early group of inductees into the Songwriter’s Hall of Fame, after its institution by the very great songwriter, Johnny Mercer.

Drake knew his music long before attended Julliard, but he was a clever lyricist as well, and in the 1940’s had some success with setting English lyrics to Latin American tunes, when the popularity of Latin music was on the rise in the English-speaking world. I had to laugh when I discovered that Drake was the composer and lyricist of a song that my father always loved, a big hit for a now mostly forgotten singer called Eddie Howard. Howard is best remembered for his rendition an American standard called “To Each His Own.” But that wasn’t Drake’s song. Nope, the one he wrote that my dad heard and loved as a kid was “The Rickety Rickshaw Man. I just this minute listened to that little novelty piece and had a moment of time-transport to my father’s childhood in 1946 when the song was a hit. Then I jumped forward a couple of decades to my own childhood, when I learned that Drake had written the English lyrics for another Latin American tune which became a big hit for Engelbert Humperdinck in 1968. That song, which I recall hearing on the airwaves myself, was a Bossa Nova called, “Quando, Quando, Quando?”

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So even though I had never heard of Ervin Drake before I began to research our song for this week, I had indeed heard his music, and no doubt anyone who watched television or listened to radio any time during the 1940’s through the 1970’s has as well. Drake wrote “It Was a Very Good Year” in 1961, at the request of his friend, music producer Artie Mogull, for the very popular Kingston Trio. Artie dropped this urgent request on Ervin, who went home and dashed off the song overnight so that Mogull could present it the next day to the trio’s lead singer, Bob Shane. Shane was looking for a good solo song to record for the group’s upcoming album. It appears that Ervin Drake had more than a few notes up his musical sleeve to be magician enough to pull this song out of his hat. Abracadabra!
Is there more to our song today? Well, of course. Bob Shane did record a very fine “straight” arrangement of “It Was a Very Good Year” for the trio’s album, and although the song was released as a single, it didn’t make the charts. But tracks from the album were played over those ever-present air waves. And as it happened several years later, Frank Sinatra was driving home to his place in Palm Springs late one night. When you’re tired and have a long drive, what do you to to stay awake? You listen to the radio, of course. The story has it that when Frank heard the tune he immediately pulled into a gas station to call his producer (from a phone booth) to ask him to get an arrangement of the song “with lots of violins and maybe an oboe” right away. You see, Frank, then 50 years old, was working on a retrospective-style album, to be called “September of My Years.” “It Was a Very Good Year” might very well have been written FOR him, and I’m sure that many people thought it had been written for him. The song just needed the right arrangement and the Frank Sinatra touch to make it a great hit and one of his signature songs. And Frank’s instinct for the song was right. In 1966, “September of My Years” won the Grammy for Album of the Year. Frank won the Grammy for Best Male Vocal Performance. And “It Was a Very Good Year” won Best Instrumental Accompanying a Vocalist. And the competition at the Grammys was overwhelming that year, with music from “The Sound of Music,” “Mary Poppins,” and “Hello, Dolly!” in the running for the awards.

And how about the song’s “story”? Whose was that? Well Sinatra made it his own, by bringing out the melancholy in the lyrics, with the wistful tale of time passing from youth through adulthood and into later years. But it turns out that at the precise moment when Ervin Drake had been asked to write a song for Bob Shane (who was by no means advanced in HIS years), Ervin (then widowed) had just rediscovered an old flame from his own youth (a widow herself) and was about to be married again, in his 40’s, to his first love. He dedicated this song to her.

Give a gift subscription

So for today, I give you Frank Sinatra’s 1965 recording of “It Was a Very Good Year,” as well as the sweet 1961 version of the song by The Kingston Trio’s Bob Shane, and a rare recording-session video of The Voice himself putting down the track for this song. That last video is simply charming in more ways than I can list. And for the hardiest of our subscribers, I have also included (above) links to the Engelbert Humperdinck and Eddie Howard songs, too. Enjoy!

Please Share this Post

Word & Song by Anthony Esolen is an online magazine devoted to reclaiming the good, the beautiful, and the true. We publish six essays each week, on words, classic hymns, poems, films, and popular songs, as well a weekly podcast for paid subscribers, alternately Poetry Aloud or Anthony Esolen Speaks. Paid subscribers also receive audio-enhanced posts and on-demand access to our full archive, and may add their comments to our posts and discussions. To support this project, please join us as a free or paid subscriber. We value all of our subscribers, and we thank you for reading Word and Song!

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I’ve been holding a place for today’s Sometimes a Song for a very long time. And when we were discussing a choice for our Word of the Week , I mentioned to Tony that someday he’d have to give me an chance to use “Georgia on My Mind.” So, he immediately piped up with the word, farmer! I’ll take that challenge (but I do think that Tony should have offered me our occasional alternate “word” category, What’s In a Name) . Well, he did throw in a mention of St. George, from the Greek word for “farmer.” And so here we go. How long have you known this song? I’m sure that I first heard it as a child in the unsurpassable recording made by Ray Charles, which earned him two Grammy Awards in 1961 and one of his four Number 1 Billboard hits. And it was the biggest hit of his career. Before recording this song, Ray Charles was well known, but more for his work in the R&B vein, with some cross-over C&W songs, and for his part in developing the musical style called Soul. Yet Ray Charles brought fans from across the musical spectrum together with his rendition of a 30-year-old song which was then becoming an “Easy Listening” standard. “Georgia on My Mind” was inducted into the Gramma Hall of Fame twice, once in in 1993 for that 1960 Ray Charles cover, and again in 2014 for the original 1930 recording by the composer himself, Hoagy Carmichael. Rolling Stone placed it at the #44 spot in their list of top American songs. Upgrade to Support Word & Song I’ve written about Hoagy before, for another of his super-hits which became immediate standards, “Stardust.” In fact, four of the best-selling and most-frequently-covered American songs of all time were written by Hoagy Carmichael. The estimate is that he composed about 500 songs in his musical career, and that 50 of them were bona fide hits, for him and for a string of singers for the bulk of the 20th century and beyond. Even spread over a period of nearly 100 years, 1100 recordings is astounding. (Not to knock our song this week, Hoagy Carmichael’s “Stardust” has been recorded almost 1300 times.) The story about “Georgia on My Mind” is just a small one today. The question that naturally arises about the song is whether it’s about Georgia, the place, or Georgia, a woman? When I was a little girl and heard this song, I assumed that it was about a lady named Georgia. What did I know? I was from New Jersey. I had an Aunt Georgia who was a very pretty redhead. Why wouldn’t someone sing a song about her? Well, it turns out that Hoagy Carmichael did have a younger sister named Georgia. Where did the idea for the song come from? Evidently Hoagy and his lyricist partner at the time, Stuart Gorrell, had gotten a suggestion from sax-player Frankie Trumbauer that they write a song about Georgia, the state. He jokingly suggested that it could being with the words, “Georgia! Georgia!” Of course Hoagy and his friend, Stuart worked on the song together. Gorrell insisted that he wrote the song with Hoagy’s sister in mind, and Hoagy said he couldn’t hear the words “Georgia, Georgia” without think of his sister while he was composing the tune. So there’s a little confusion about the original intent, but then, Stuard did know Hoagy’s sister personally, because he and Hoagy had been friends since college days. And they were both from Indiana. Give a gift subscription Still .. people do think of places they love in this kind of longing way, when they are looking back with nostalgia from a distance of years and miles. And guess what? Ray Charles WAS indeed a Georgia boy. When he sang the song, who knows what it meant to him, but it could be taken as a yearning for home. However it came about, “Georgia on My Mind” is a mighty American song and one of the biggest hits of the mid-century. And in 1979 the Georgia legislature decided to make it their own, and they adopted it as the state song. Ray Charles, of course, was invited to perform the song at the State House that year. And I am sure that they had Hoagy’s permission to do that. For today I’m including the best version of “Georgia on My Mind” ever recorded, by Ray Charles, who truly made it his own. And for some added sweetness, I give you an appearance Hoagy Carmichael made on the Tennessee Ernie Ford television show, playing piano for Ernie’s very fine performance of the song. And last, I give you Hoagy’s original recording from 1930 — to let you experience the song in its original form. Hoagy was no singer, you will hear, but what a gift to American music he was. Please Share this Post Word & Song by Anthony Esolen is an online magazine devoted to reclaiming the good, the beautiful, and the true. We publish six essays each week, on words, classic hymns, poems, films, and popular songs, as well a weekly podcast for paid subscribers, alternately Poetry Aloud or Anthony Esolen Speaks . Paid subscribers also receive audio-enhanced posts and on-demand access to our full archive, and may add their comments to our posts and discussions. To support this project, please join us as a free or paid subscriber. We value all of our subscribers, and we thank you for reading Word and Song!…
 
Time for a comedy for our Film of the Week ! For a while after World War II, when a lot of soldier boys were going back to the farm they missed or they dreamed of carving out for themselves, there were a lot of comedies set out in the country. They were mostly good-humored, with some merry laughter at the supposedly simple ways down on the farm, and some merrier laughter at the really simple ways of city folk once they show up at a farm. On television, you had The Real McCoys, with a family transplanted from West Virginia out to California, led by the whistle-voiced old grandpa Amos (Walter Brennan), and all their misadventures, or The Beverly Hillbillies, one of those zany comedies that boldly marches right over the border of plausibility — with transplanted log-cabin Tennesseans, suddenly rich from an accidental oil strike, moving out to California with their rickety old truck and their shotguns and their down-home naivete and generosity and (in skinny little old Granny of happy memory) fire-sparking readiness to fight, especially with Yankees. Or it was The Andy Griffith Show, with the town of Mayberry, NC, where Otis the town drunk can expect a decent bed in the sheriff’s jail, and Barney the deputy is allowed only one bullet for his pistol, but he’s got to keep it in his pocket, and Floyd the barber spreads all the chatter a town needs to keep up its social life, and Barney and the sheriff Andy have to pretend to like Aunt Bee’s pickles, which requires a lot of pretending! City people laughing at farmers, and farmers laughing at city people — that’s not as old as the hills, but as old as cities, anyhow. What happens when farmers go to the city is one thing. How about when city people try their hands at farming? Long before the absurd Oliver Wendell Douglas left his law practice in New York to go to Hooterville (and nobody knows what part of the country Hooterville is in) to get misty-eyed over some scraggly ears of corn, in that maddest of all mad sitcoms, Green Acres, we had our Film of the Week , The Egg and I, starring two of our favorites, Fred MacMurray and Claudette Colbert as a young married couple, Bob and Betty MacDonald, who are starting out on a brave enterprise: they’re going to run a chicken farm. He’s all enthusiastic about it, and she, well, she goes along and tries very hard, and of course the house he buys is about as ramshackle as the one that Mr. Douglas in Green Acres bought from Mr. Haney the comical con-man and peddler. Eggs! There’s a fortune in them! Help Word & Song with an Upgrade to Paid Sure, we’ve got to have bumps on the road — and pretty big bumps they are. Betty’s not exactly delighted at having to deal with ornery animals, the brave hunting dog and guard dog Bob buys is afraid of his own shadow, there’s a swanky divorcee who’s got a place down the road and she seems to have her eye on Bob, and you never know when a big storm is going to break out, or a fire, what with all that hay and other sorts of tinder in a barn. And then there are the neighbors! They are — in fact — Ma and Pa Kettle, and their eleven — “Or is it twelve?” Ma asks — children. Or maybe there are fifteen — who knows? Marjorie Main and Percy Kilbride delighted the audiences so much that Universal Studios turned them into a regular franchise, making nine Ma and Pa Kettle movies, and they needed them, too, because those crazy comedies, with the big-boned and hoarse Ma and the lazy slow-drawling Pa, saved Universal from going bankrupt. Give a gift subscription So then, if you like the Ma and Pa Kettle movies, which my father loved, here’s where those worthy characters first show up, in The Egg and I. But that’s not to say that they carry the film. Fred MacMurray and Claudette Colbert were terrific comic actors, and Fred, believe it or not, actually did run a substantial farm and vineyard in northern California, and it’s still going strong, as you can see . But then, a lot of those Hollywood people in those days had ranches or farms. You might say, “Well, I’m not surprised that Joel McCrea had a ranch, what with his doing all those westerns.” How about Claude Rains, working a 340-acre farm in Pennsylvania for 15 years, up to his ankles in mud and delighting in it? A few years ago, I was riding in a car through central Illinois, and my host pointed my attention to vast fields of soybeans, nothing but soybeans as far as the eye could see, and he said, “Most of the time, it’s corporations that run these soybean farms, and nobody even really lives there.” What a thing. Give me Old MacDonald’s farm any day. Share this Post Word & Song by Anthony Esolen is an online magazine devoted to reclaiming the good, the beautiful, and the true. We publish six essays each week, on words, classic hymns, poems, films, and popular songs, as well a weekly podcast for paid subscribers, alternately Poetry Aloud or Anthony Esolen Speaks . Paid subscribers also receive audio-enhanced posts and on-demand access to our full archive, and may add their comments to our posts and discussions. To support this project, please join us as a free or paid subscriber. We value all of our subscribers, and we thank you for reading Word and Song!…
 
Our Word of the Week is farmer , so it’s fitting for us to choose a hymn to cheer the hearts of those who work the soil. “But,” you say, “it’s January! Nobody’s going to plow the soil in January.” Well, nobody will who lives in the north temperate zone and above. In the tropics or in Australia or Brazil or Argentina, a good lot of soil-working will be done. In any case, as tomorrow’s Poem of the Week will show, the farmer has his work to do in all seasons, month by month, in cold weather as in hot, in moist as in dry. The first time I ever heard this week’s hymn – and it’s something of a scandal that it took so long – I was in high school, and I went to a local production of the musical Godspell. The play seems innocent enough now, though the film, whose opening features a large group of young people of both sexes taking their shoes off and cavorting in a public fountain, is embarrassingly silly. It’s notable, I guess, that the one song I remember clearly from the play is the one whose words and melody the playwright simply took straight from the old traditional hymnals. It’s the harvest hymn “We Plow the Fields and Scatter,” sung to the melody Wir Pfluegen , German for “We Plow,” composed specifically for the text. We Need Your Support at W&S There’s a story behind the poem. After he recovered from a grave illness, the poet, Matthias Claudius (1740-1815), returned to the faith of his childhood and had begun to write religious verses. One of the poems was a dedication to God of the farmer’s life and ways, the seasons of the year, and the goodness of all the gifts of the natural world. The original began with a powerful and perfectly charming stanza that brings us back far earlier than the harvest, earlier than springtime – all the way to the beginning of all things. I’ll translate it here into English prose: “In the beginning the earth was but dark, and waste, and empty, and if anything was to be and to grow, it must come from somewhere else.” After which followed the refrain: “All good gifts came from on high, from God, from the lovely blue heaven above.” And then Claudius simply takes us from that beginning to our time: “So it went from the beginning, just as God spoke, and as it was in the beginning, so it has gone on to this very day.” And that’s where our hymn begins, in the third stanza, with plowing and scattering seed. Now, Claudius wrote sixteen stanzas for his hymn, with the verses to be sung by a cantor representing the farmer, and the refrain sung by the choir. The hymn proved to be quite popular, and we find it in a collection, Melodies for Schoolchildren, published in 1800. Various composers have set it to music – Claudius himself was the first. The melody we know it by, composed by Johann Schulz, is jaunty and energetic and cheerful, perfect for a harvest festival, with bonfires and good food after honest hard work, and thanks to God who gives us from his great bounty. In 1862, Jane Campbell composed the fine short paraphrase of Claudius’ poem, giving us the text as we have it for our hymn. In the first stanza, we mention what we do – we plow, we scatter seed – but the sun and the rain are sent down by almighty God, as in fact the seed itself has been wrought by God’s own hand. All good gifts come from Him, and those gifts include, as we see in the second stanza, those things which we cannot produce with all our toil, for God “paints the wayside flower” and “lights the evening star.” At last, in the third stanza, we ask what we can give to God in return for all His gifts. Campbell originally wrote that we can give Him nothing but what He most desires, our grateful hears. That verse was amended slightly so that the hymn would fit well for a harvest service, or really for any service in which an offertory hymn is appropriate: we offer in turn to God His own gifts to us, and, more than all, our “humble, grateful hearts,” for that is the sacrifice He most desires. Share this Post Text within this block will maintain its original spacing when published We plough the fields, and scatter The good seed on the land, But it is fed and watered By God's almighty hand; He sends the snow in winter, The warmth to swell the grain, The breezes, and the sunshine, And soft, refreshing rain. Chorus: All good gifts around us Are sent from heaven above, Then thank the Lord, Oh! thank the Lord, for all His love. He only is the Maker Of all things near and far: He paints the wayside flower, He lights the evening star; The winds and waves obey Him, By Him, the birds are fed; Much more to us, His children, He gives our daily bread. [Chorus] We thank Thee, then, O Father, For all things bright and good, The seed-time and the harvest, Our life, our health, our food; Accept the gifts we offer, For all Thy love imparts, And, what Thou most desirest Our humble, thankful hearts. Word & Song by Anthony Esolen is an online magazine devoted to reclaiming the good, the beautiful, and the true. We publish six essays each week, on words, classic hymns, poems, films, and popular songs, as well a weekly podcast for paid subscribers, alternately Poetry Aloud or Anthony Esolen Speaks . Paid subscribers also receive audio-enhanced posts and on-demand access to our full archive, and may add their comments to our posts and discussions. To support this project, please join us as a free or paid subscriber. We value all of our subscribers, and we thank you for reading Word and Song! Share Word & Song by Anthony Esolen…
 
Hello out there, all you who embody our Word of the Week ! My father, who by preference sold insurance in the rural counties east and south and north of us rather than in our own urban and suburban county, always liked farmers , for their friendliness and their quite literally down-to-earth ways. The feeling was mutual, and that’s why he became so successful. Farmers stick together, so that if one fellow recommended my father for the service he provided him in pressing a claim against the company (which the company encouraged their agents to do), that meant that eight or nine other farmers might be happy to take him into their living rooms when he happened by. It’s odd but true, that farmers, not living cheek-by-jowl as townsmen do, but often separated by many acres, are the most sociable of people. Big barns are for sheltering and housing the cows and horses, but what’s their second purpose, if not for fiddlers and a dance? Or so it was in times past, and not so distant past. Or maybe it’s the constant care for animals, even those that will go to serving the table, that gives the farmer a certain shade of sober kindliness, such as Debra’s Uncle Willard possessed; or the need to perform, every day, strenuous physical labor, that makes the farmer at once tough and resilient and unpretentious. And there is hardly a way to account for the blessings, mingled with hardship though they may be, of spending so many hours under the open sky, in sun and rain and snow, treading the rich crumbly soil, or up to your ankles in mud; probably the farmer is least prone to certain kinds of neuroses, those that you get when your quarters are too close and you are tempted to retreat into the nooks and crannies of fear and unmet desire and an unhealthy imagination. We can imagine Melville’s poor Bartleby as a scrivener in an office, staring at a wall. We can hardly imagine him as a farmer gauging the weather coming from the west. So, three cheers to all farmers! We can live without letters and offices. We can’t live without food. And we can’t be healthy without the sky. Support Word & Song w/an Upgrade In most languages, the word for farmer will have something to do with the soil. In Latin, the farmer is agricola, literally someone who turns round or cultivates the ager, the field (Latin ager is a cousin to English acre; for the correspondence of Indo-European g to Germanic k, see also Latin genu, English knee, Latin genus, English kin, Latin granum, English corn ). In Greek, the farmer is georgos, literally, someone who works the earth. The ge- there gives us, by borrowing and coining, English geography, the writing down of the features of the earth , and English geology, reasoning about the earth. Georgos is also a name: hence Saint George, one of the most beloved of saints from the world of the early Church, whose name is to be found everywhere, as English George, Armenian Kevork, German Georg and Jürgen, Russian Yuri, Polish Jerzy, and so forth. And why should George not be beloved? He was a gentle warrior, who in legend saved the maiden by slaying the dragon. That legend gave Edmund Spenser the inspiration behind his wonderful first book of The Faerie Queene, in which the Knight of the Red Cross, who knows neither his true provenance nor his destiny, will learn that he is to be called “Saint George of merry England,” the patron of that land. “By George!” Englishmen have cried, since at least the time of Shakespeare. But English farmer did not refer to the soil. It comes to us from the Norman French, and it suggests an economic relationship between the owner of the land and the fellow who was going to work it. The Norman lords quite often did none of that finger-soiling work. They left that to the English they had conquered. Hence, as Sir Walter Scott observed (I believe in his novel of strife between the Norman French and the native English, Ivanhoe ), in English the word for the animal is native, but the word for the food you get from it is French, because the French and not the natives would be eating it. So we have Germanic sheep, but French mutton; Germanic cow, but French beef, Germanic deer, but French venison. Anyway, in French, a contract between the owner of property and the leaseholder was a ferme, and the holder himself was a fermiere, ultimately from Latin firma, a fixed (that is to say, firm ) payment. Give a gift subscription If you’re just renting your farm, you may look forward to the time when you will buy it and own it outright. But to buy the farm, in American military slang, meant that you “buy it,” that is, you die. Human languages are full of ways to make a jest of our enemy, Death — pushing up daisies, for example. I guess farmers, because of the work they do, are themselves great coiners of jesting phrases, such as “to buy a pig in a poke,” to “make hay while the sun shines,” to “shut the barn after the horse is out,” and so on. And long may their tribe prosper! Share this Post “The Visit to the Tenant Farmer,” Jan Brueghel, the Elder. Public Domain. Word & Song by Anthony Esolen is an online magazine devoted to reclaiming the good, the beautiful, and the true. We publish six essays each week, on words, classic hymns, poems, films, and popular songs, as well a weekly podcast for paid subscribers, alternately Poetry Aloud or Anthony Esolen Speaks . Paid subscribers also receive audio-enhanced posts and on-demand access to our full archive, and may add their comments to our posts and discussions. To support this project, please join us as a free or paid subscriber. We value all of our subscribers, and we thank you for reading Word and Song! Learn More About Word & Song Browse Our Archive…
 
From the Brothers Grimm, those great historians and linguists and collectors of folk stories from all over the German-speaking lands, we’ve got a story about a funny little man, half helpful and half malicious, who has a secret he manages to keep until his own glee gets the better of him! Enjoy this one with the children, and please let us know if you want more of these rough diamonds in the future. “Rumplestiltskin,” Walter Crane. Public Domain. Share this Post Give a gift subscription Word & Song by Anthony Esolen is an online magazine devoted to reclaiming the good, the beautiful, and the true. We publish six essays each week, on words, classic hymns, poems, films, and popular songs, as well a weekly podcast for paid subscribers, alternately Poetry Aloud or Anthony Esolen Speaks . Paid subscribers also receive audio-enhanced posts and on-demand access to our full archive, and may add their comments to our posts and discussions. To support this project, please join us as a free or paid subscriber. We value all of our subscribers, and we thank you for reading Word and Song! Many thanks to our founders and paid subscribers for supporting our mission at Word & Song!…
 
The scene is a bright borderland between heaven and a drab city below. One of the blest, a cheery Scotsman named George, has come down from the regions of bliss to meet our narrator and to teach him the secrets of genuine joy and love, human and divine. They’re secrets, not because God hides them, but because we human beings, such as we are, have weak eyes, even if we do look in the right places, and often we don’t. All at once a woman of splendid beauty comes down from the mountains, accompanied by a train of spirits, then of boys and girls scattering flowers to strew her way, and then even animals — dogs and cats, birds and horses. The narrator at first thinks it must be Mary, and he stammers to ask George, who anticipates him, saying no, it isn’t. “It’s someone ye’ll never have heard of,” he says. “Her name was Sarah Smith and she lived at Golders Green.” A more humdrum name and place it is hard to imagine. But, George continues, “She is one of the great ones. Ye’ll have heard that fame in this country and fame on Earth are two quite different things.” This ordinary woman touched and blessed the lives of everyone who met her. “Every young man or boy that met her became her son — even if it was only the boy who brought the meat to her back door. Every girl that met her was her daughter.” And this made them more loving to their parents, truer to husband or wife. The world can’t see it, as I’ve said. But nothing is hidden from God. Please Upgrade to Support W&S As no doubt many of our readers know, that scene above comes from C. S. Lewis’ brilliant novel, The Great Divorce. And something like that sentiment we find in today’s Poem of the Week, by the wise, honest, and tender-hearted poet Thomas Gray. He is in a country churchyard, and he looks around at the memorials, and he asks a question that might occur to somebody who cares about human lives and all the secrets they hold. What were these people like? They lived in obscurity. It’s just a country village, after all. They had no great classical learning. They were far from the busy markets of the world. They did not exercise their lungs in the House of Commons. Who knows but God what they might have done, had Oxford or Cambridge been in their field of vision? Who knows what good, or what evil, their humble circumstances kept them from performing? But God does not judge in the subjunctive mood. He judges the heart; what man cannot see. Who can say that he really knows himself? The saint on earth, I think, is a hundred times more blessed than he knows. I think of my two grandmothers in this regard. Did they know how saintly they were? They hardly suspected they were good at all, because they did not dwell on themselves. But Gray is in that churchyard, and he asks the questions that will occur to a man of large heart, moved by the human things — what no merely material improvements in life will change. What secrets do these homely memorials bear? And he imagines one soul especially, someone who might have been a poet, and perhaps was a poet in a small and secret way — not somebody who plays with words, but rather somebody who dares to explore, with sympathy, the human heart. That’s the soul whose Epitaph concludes the poem. The first excerpt below comes from Gray’s own musings; the second is that Epitaph, sober, gentle, and serene. “St. Martin’s Church, Canterbury,” E. W. Haslehust. Public Domain. Please Share this Post Text within this block will maintain its original spacing when published . . . Perhaps in this neglected spot is laid Some heart once pregnant with celestial Fire, Hands that the rod of empire might have swayed, Or waked to ecstasy the living lyre. But Knowledge to their eyes her ample page Rich with the spoils of Time did ne'er unroll: Chill Penury repressed their noble rage, And froze the genial current of the soul. Full many a gem of purest ray serene The dark unfathomed caves of ocean bear; Full many a flower is born to blush unseen, And waste its sweetness on the desert air. Some village Hampden that with dauntless breast The little tyrant of the fields withstood, Some mute inglorious Milton here may rest, Some Cromwell guiltless of his country's blood. . . The EPITAPH. Here rests his head upon the lap of earth A youth to fortune and to fame unknown; Fair Science frowned not on his humble birth, And Melancholy marked him for her own. Large was his bounty, and his soul sincere, Heaven did a recompense as largely send; He gave to Misery all he had, a tear; He gained from Heaven ('twas all he wished) a friend. No farther seek his merits to disclose, Or draw his frailties from their dread abode, (There they alike in trembling hope repose) The bosom of his Father and his God. Word & Song by Anthony Esolen is an online magazine devoted to reclaiming the good, the beautiful, and the true. We publish six essays each week, on words, classic hymns, poems, films, and popular songs, as well a weekly podcast for paid subscribers, alternately Poetry Aloud or Anthony Esolen Speaks . Paid subscribers also receive audio-enhanced posts and on-demand access to our full archive, and may add their comments to our posts and discussions. To support this project, please join us as a free or paid subscriber. We value all of our subscribers, and we thank you for reading Word and Song! Thank you for supporting our mission at Word & Song!…
 
The author of our Hymn of the Week , John Keble, was the sort of man it is hard to imagine outside of the nineteenth century, and that is to the credit of his age. His father was an Anglican minister, devout, intelligent, highly cultured, and satisfied with a modest vicarage in Gloucestershire, in the lovely surroundings of the Cotswolds. The elder Keble educated his children at home, sending the boys to Oxford when they were ready, which his son John did at age 14, winning a scholarship to Corpus Christi College. When you hear the word “college,” you must not think of those credentialing machines that we have among us, where thousands of young people dwell in overwhelming anonymity, thinking mainly of getting out of there to build a career in the world and to make money or to secure some personal ambition. Corpus Christi College, when John Keble was a member, and indeed only a young teenage boy still growing up, was made up of a few dozen youths who lived together, read books together, discussed important questions regarding religion, political life, history, literature, and art, and formed their imaginations at the fireside of friendship. One of those fellows was Tom Arnold, that is, the boy who would become Dr. Thomas Arnold, the wise and saintly headmaster of Rugby (whence we get the name of the sport the boys invented there), and father of the poet and titan of criticism, Matthew Arnold. Keble was a splendid scholar, not only in the classics but in mathematics too, and at the age of 18 he was elected to be a fellow at Oriel College. That would be like being an assistant professor at Harvard. Among his associates at Oriel, and a dear friend and collaborator, was the young John Henry Newman , whose work we have also featured at Word and Song. But that is another story. Join us as a Paid Subscriber Keble wasn’t just a scholar or a controversialist. He was a poet. He never claimed to be a great poet, nor does it appear that it was in his heart to strive for comparison with such giants of religious poetry as George Herbert or John Milton . But all that he wrote, if I can judge by what I have seen, is strong, direct, unpretentious, and sincere. In the introduction to his collection of poems, The Christian Year, he says that he sought for some strain of music of his own, worthy to express his devotion to God. Of himself there was none. “Prayer is the secret , ” he says. “And thus with untuned heart I feebly prayed,” knocking timidly at the door. The Spirit, the “Fountain of harmony,” “by whom the troubled waves of earthly sound / Are gathered into order,” that same Spirit that stirred above the dark waters on the first day of creation, must stir above the soul and quicken it with light. So then, Keble’s poetry is prayer, born of prayer. But that doesn’t mean that he was simply scribbling down his feelings as he pleased. Remember, all his life he was surrounded by the refinements of a classical education; and he also numbered among his closest friends Sir John Coleridge, nephew of the poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge , and the poet Wordsworth himself, whose nephew Christopher Wordsworth, later an Anglican bishop, wrote our previous Hymn of the Week, “Songs of Thankfulness and Praise.” Give a gift subscription This week’s hymn, “Blest Are the Pure in Heart,” is taken from a much longer poem that Keble published in The Christian Year. It is headed with the verse from the Beatitudes: “Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God.” That is the secret that is in plain sight. Let’s think about this for a moment. It isn’t only true that we love somebody because we’ve gotten to know him. It is also true that we can hardly get to know a human being very deeply unless we love him. “Where there is love, there is an eye,” said the worthy and fascinating monk, Richard of Saint Victor. It’s not just because people hide things. It simply follows from the nature of an intellectual being. There are unfathomed depths. Why, we often float along the surface of our own selves, so that we need someone who loves us to cause us to see more of that world beneath, and with God, we are talking about someone who, to quote Saint Augustine, “is more intimately near to us than we are to ourselves.” “What do you wish?” asked Jesus to the blind Bartimaeus. “Lord,” he replied, “that I may see.” Hence do we pray for purity of heart: that we may see. Share this Post Text within this block will maintain its original spacing when published Blest are the pure in heart, For they shall see our God; The secret of the Lord is theirs, Their soul is Christ's abode. The Lord, who left the heavens Our life and peace to bring, To dwell in lowliness with men, Their pattern and their King, He to the lowly soul Doth still himself impart; And for his dwelling and his throne Chooseth the pure in heart. Lord, we thy presence seek; May ours this blessing be; Give us a pure and lowly heart, A temple meet for thee. Debra has found for you today a beautiful version of this week’s hymn sung by The Guilford Cathedral Choir. Word & Song by Anthony Esolen is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.…
 
Here at Sometimes a Song I’ve often commented that the great flowering of American popular music in the mid-twentieth century came about as a result of the convergence of talents and circumstances, and sometimes of hardship or happenstance. This week’s selection is an example of such a song. “It Was a Very Good Year” was far from the first song written by Ervin Drake, a man who was very well known behind the musical scenes in the 1950’s and 1960’s for the music he produced in television, particularly in television specials for a list of big stars as long as your arm. Born in 1919, Drake grew up in Manhattan, where he worked on many varsity shows as a student at City College of New York, while earning a degree in social science. But three decades elapsed — not to mention a whole career in popular music — between his earning his degree in Social Science in 1936 and his taking a formal music degree at Julliard in the mid-1960’s. Drake was among the early group of inductees into the Songwriter’s Hall of Fame, after its institution by the very great songwriter, Johnny Mercer. Drake knew his music long before attended Julliard, but he was a clever lyricist as well, and in the 1940’s had some success with setting English lyrics to Latin American tunes, when the popularity of Latin music was on the rise in the English-speaking world. I had to laugh when I discovered that Drake was the composer and lyricist of a song that my father always loved, a big hit for a now mostly forgotten singer called Eddie Howard. Howard is best remembered for his rendition an American standard called “To Each His Own.” But that wasn’t Drake’s song. Nope, the one he wrote that my dad heard and loved as a kid was “The Rickety Rickshaw Man . I just this minute listened to that little novelty piece and had a moment of time-transport to my father’s childhood in 1946 when the song was a hit. Then I jumped forward a couple of decades to my own childhood, when I learned that Drake had written the English lyrics for another Latin American tune which became a big hit for Engelbert Humperdinck in 1968. That song, which I recall hearing on the airwaves myself, was a Bossa Nova called, “Quando, Quando, Quando?” Upgrade to Support Word & Song So even though I had never heard of Ervin Drake before I began to research our song for this week, I had indeed heard his music, and no doubt anyone who watched television or listened to radio any time during the 1940’s through the 1970’s has as well. Drake wrote “It Was a Very Good Year” in 1961, at the request of his friend, music producer Artie Mogull, for the very popular Kingston Trio. Artie dropped this urgent request on Ervin, who went home and dashed off the song overnight so that Mogull could present it the next day to the trio’s lead singer, Bob Shane. Shane was looking for a good solo song to record for the group’s upcoming album. It appears that Ervin Drake had more than a few notes up his musical sleeve to be magician enough to pull this song out of his hat. Abracadabra! Is there more to our song today? Well, of course. Bob Shane did record a very fine “straight” arrangement of “It Was a Very Good Year” for the trio’s album, and although the song was released as a single, it didn’t make the charts. But tracks from the album were played over those ever-present air waves. And as it happened several years later, Frank Sinatra was driving home to his place in Palm Springs late one night. When you’re tired and have a long drive, what do you to to stay awake? You listen to the radio, of course. The story has it that when Frank heard the tune he immediately pulled into a gas station to call his producer (from a phone booth) to ask him to get an arrangement of the song “with lots of violins and maybe an oboe” right away . You see, Frank, then 50 years old, was working on a retrospective-style album, to be called “September of My Years.” “It Was a Very Good Year” might very well have been written FOR him, and I’m sure that many people thought it had been written for him. The song just needed the right arrangement and the Frank Sinatra touch to make it a great hit and one of his signature songs. And Frank’s instinct for the song was right. In 1966, “September of My Years” won the Grammy for Album of the Year . Frank won the Grammy for Best Male Vocal Performance . And “It Was a Very Good Year” won Best Instrumental Accompanying a Vocalist . And the competition at the Grammys was overwhelming that year, with music from “The Sound of Music,” “Mary Poppins,” and “Hello, Dolly!” in the running for the awards. And how about the song’s “story”? Whose was that? Well Sinatra made it his own, by bringing out the melancholy in the lyrics, with the wistful tale of time passing from youth through adulthood and into later years. But it turns out that at the precise moment when Ervin Drake had been asked to write a song for Bob Shane (who was by no means advanced in HIS years), Ervin (then widowed) had just rediscovered an old flame from his own youth (a widow herself) and was about to be married again, in his 40’s, to his first love. He dedicated this song to her. Give a gift subscription So for today, I give you Frank Sinatra’s 1965 recording of “It Was a Very Good Year,” as well as the sweet 1961 version of the song by The Kingston Trio ’s Bob Shane, and a rare recording-session video of The Voice himself putting down the track for this song. That last video is simply charming in more ways than I can list. And for the hardiest of our subscribers, I have also included (above) links to the Engelbert Humperdinck and Eddie Howard songs, too. Enjoy! Please Share this Post Word & Song by Anthony Esolen is an online magazine devoted to reclaiming the good, the beautiful, and the true. We publish six essays each week, on words, classic hymns, poems, films, and popular songs, as well a weekly podcast for paid subscribers, alternately Poetry Aloud or Anthony Esolen Speaks . Paid subscribers also receive audio-enhanced posts and on-demand access to our full archive, and may add their comments to our posts and discussions. To support this project, please join us as a free or paid subscriber. We value all of our subscribers, and we thank you for reading Word and Song!…
 
Here, ladies and gentlemen, is a poem that schoolchildren once loved, and that has given us the idea of the “albatross around the neck,” the punishment that attends to the Ancient Mariner in our ballad today, because without any motivation, he had so little regard for the beautiful creature of God that he shot it, for no reason but that he could. The Mariner endures a terrible penance, and he is forgiven, but on condition — that he never leave off, but he must wander round the world, and when he meets some man whom he knows must hear his tale, he must tell it, so that the man may avert the same kind of sin and its dreadful punishment. We hope you will appreciate this classic work of English poetry and perhaps share Word & Song to help us reach more readers. We have included the entire poem so that you may read along with Tony’s recitation of it. Share this Post Give a gift subscription “The Albatross about My Head was Strung, William Strang. Public Domain. Word & Song by Anthony Esolen is an online magazine devoted to reclaiming the good, the beautiful, and the true. We publish six essays each week, on words, classic hymns, poems, films, and popular songs, as well a weekly podcast for paid subscribers, alternately Poetry Aloud or Anthony Esolen Speaks . Paid subscribers also receive audio-enhanced posts and on-demand access to our full archive, and may add their comments to our posts and discussions. To support this project, please join us as a free or paid subscriber. We value all of our subscribers, and we thank you for reading Word and Song! Many thanks to our founders and paid subscribers for supporting our mission at Word & Song! Text within this block will maintain its original spacing when published The Rime of the Ancient Mariner Argument How a Ship having passed the Line was driven by storms to the cold Country towards the South Pole; and how from thence she made her course to the tropical Latitude of the Great Pacific Ocean; and of the strange things that befell; and in what manner the Ancyent Marinere came back to his own Country. PART I It is an ancient Mariner, And he stoppeth one of three. 'By thy long grey beard and glittering eye, Now wherefore stopp'st thou me? The Bridegroom's doors are opened wide, And I am next of kin; The guests are met, the feast is set: May'st hear the merry din.' He holds him with his skinny hand, 'There was a ship,' quoth he. 'Hold off! unhand me, grey-beard loon!' Eftsoons his hand dropt he. He holds him with his glittering eye— The Wedding-Guest stood still, And listens like a three years' child: The Mariner hath his will. The Wedding-Guest sat on a stone: He cannot choose but hear; And thus spake on that ancient man, The bright-eyed Mariner. 'The ship was cheered, the harbour cleared, Merrily did we drop Below the kirk, below the hill, Below the lighthouse top. The Sun came up upon the left, Out of the sea came he! And he shone bright, and on the right Went down into the sea. Higher and higher every day, Till over the mast at noon—' The Wedding-Guest here beat his breast, For he heard the loud bassoon. The bride hath paced into the hall, Red as a rose is she; Nodding their heads before her goes The merry minstrelsy. The Wedding-Guest he beat his breast, Yet he cannot choose but hear; And thus spake on that ancient man, The bright-eyed Mariner. And now the STORM-BLAST came, and he Was tyrannous and strong: He struck with his o'ertaking wings, And chased us south along. With sloping masts and dipping prow, As who pursued with yell and blow Still treads the shadow of his foe, And forward bends his head, The ship drove fast, loud roared the blast, And southward aye we fled. And now there came both mist and snow, And it grew wondrous cold: And ice, mast-high, came floating by, As green as emerald. And through the drifts the snowy clifts Did send a dismal sheen: Nor shapes of men nor beasts we ken— The ice was all between. The ice was here, the ice was there, The ice was all around: It cracked and growled, and roared and howled, Like noises in a swound! At length did cross an Albatross, Thorough the fog it came; As if it had been a Christian soul, We hailed it in God's name. It ate the food it ne'er had eat, And round and round it flew. The ice did split with a thunder-fit; The helmsman steered us through! And a good south wind sprung up behind; The Albatross did follow, And every day, for food or play, Came to the mariner's hollo! In mist or cloud, on mast or shroud, It perched for vespers nine; Whiles all the night, through fog-smoke white, Glimmered the white Moon-shine.' 'God save thee, ancient Mariner! From the fiends, that plague thee thus!— Why look'st thou so?'—With my cross-bow I shot the ALBATROSS. PART II The Sun now rose upon the right: Out of the sea came he, Still hid in mist, and on the left Went down into the sea. And the good south wind still blew behind, But no sweet bird did follow, Nor any day for food or play Came to the mariner's hollo! And I had done a hellish thing, And it would work 'em woe: For all averred, I had killed the bird That made the breeze to blow. Ah wretch! said they, the bird to slay, That made the breeze to blow! Nor dim nor red, like God's own head, The glorious Sun uprist: Then all averred, I had killed the bird That brought the fog and mist. 'Twas right, said they, such birds to slay, That bring the fog and mist. The fair breeze blew, the white foam flew, The furrow followed free; We were the first that ever burst Into that silent sea. Down dropt the breeze, the sails dropt down, 'Twas sad as sad could be; And we did speak only to break The silence of the sea! All in a hot and copper sky, The bloody Sun, at noon, Right up above the mast did stand, No bigger than the Moon. Day after day, day after day, We stuck, nor breath nor motion; As idle as a painted ship Upon a painted ocean. Water, water, every where, And all the boards did shrink; Water, water, every where, Nor any drop to drink. The very deep did rot: O Christ! That ever this should be! Yea, slimy things did crawl with legs Upon the slimy sea. About, about, in reel and rout The death-fires danced at night; The water, like a witch's oils, Burnt green, and blue and white. And some in dreams assurèd were Of the Spirit that plagued us so; Nine fathom deep he had followed us From the land of mist and snow. And every tongue, through utter drought, Was withered at the root; We could not speak, no more than if We had been choked with soot. Ah! well a-day! what evil looks Had I from old and young! Instead of the cross, the Albatross About my neck was hung. PART III There passed a weary time. Each throat Was parched, and glazed each eye. A weary time! a weary time! How glazed each weary eye, When looking westward, I beheld A something in the sky. At first it seemed a little speck, And then it seemed a mist; It moved and moved, and took at last A certain shape, I wist. A speck, a mist, a shape, I wist! And still it neared and neared: As if it dodged a water-sprite, It plunged and tacked and veered. With throats unslaked, with black lips baked, We could nor laugh nor wail; Through utter drought all dumb we stood! I bit my arm, I sucked the blood, And cried, A sail! a sail! With throats unslaked, with black lips baked, Agape they heard me call: Gramercy! they for joy did grin, And all at once their breath drew in. As they were drinking all. See! see! (I cried) she tacks no more! Hither to work us weal; Without a breeze, without a tide, She steadies with upright keel! The western wave was all a-flame. The day was well nigh done! Almost upon the western wave Rested the broad bright Sun; When that strange shape drove suddenly Betwixt us and the Sun. And straight the Sun was flecked with bars, (Heaven's Mother send us grace!) As if through a dungeon-grate he peered With broad and burning face. Alas! (thought I, and my heart beat loud) How fast she nears and nears! Are those her sails that glance in the Sun, Like restless gossameres? Are those her ribs through which the Sun Did peer, as through a grate? And is that Woman all her crew? Is that a DEATH? and are there two? Is DEATH that woman's mate? Her lips were red, her looks were free, Her locks were yellow as gold: Her skin was as white as leprosy, The Night-mare LIFE-IN-DEATH was she, Who thicks man's blood with cold. The naked hulk alongside came, And the twain were casting dice; 'The game is done! I've won! I've won!' Quoth she, and whistles thrice. The Sun's rim dips; the stars rush out; At one stride comes the dark; With far-heard whisper, o'er the sea, Off shot the spectre-bark. We listened and looked sideways up! Fear at my heart, as at a cup, My life-blood seemed to sip! The stars were dim, and thick the night, The steersman's face by his lamp gleamed white; From the sails the dew did drip— Till clomb above the eastern bar The hornèd Moon, with one bright star Within the nether tip. One after one, by the star-dogged Moon, Too quick for groan or sigh, Each turned his face with a ghastly pang, And cursed me with his eye. Four times fifty living men, (And I heard nor sigh nor groan) With heavy thump, a lifeless lump, They dropped down one by one. The souls did from their bodies fly,— They fled to bliss or woe! And every soul, it passed me by, Like the whizz of my cross-bow! PART IV 'I fear thee, ancient Mariner! I fear thy skinny hand! And thou art long, and lank, and brown, As is the ribbed sea-sand. I fear thee and thy glittering eye, And thy skinny hand, so brown.'— Fear not, fear not, thou Wedding-Guest! This body dropt not down. Alone, alone, all, all alone, Alone on a wide wide sea! And never a saint took pity on My soul in agony. The many men, so beautiful! And they all dead did lie: And a thousand thousand slimy things Lived on; and so did I. I looked upon the rotting sea, And drew my eyes away; I looked upon the rotting deck, And there the dead men lay. I looked to heaven, and tried to pray; But or ever a prayer had gusht, A wicked whisper came, and made My heart as dry as dust. I closed my lids, and kept them close, And the balls like pulses beat; For the sky and the sea, and the sea and the sky Lay dead like a load on my weary eye, And the dead were at my feet. The cold sweat melted from their limbs, Nor rot nor reek did they: The look with which they looked on me Had never passed away. An orphan's curse would drag to hell A spirit from on high; But oh! more horrible than that Is the curse in a dead man's eye! Seven days, seven nights, I saw that curse, And yet I could not die. The moving Moon went up the sky, And no where did abide: Softly she was going up, And a star or two beside— Her beams bemocked the sultry main, Like April hoar-frost spread; But where the ship's huge shadow lay, The charmèd water burnt alway A still and awful red. Beyond the shadow of the ship, I watched the water-snakes: They moved in tracks of shining white, And when they reared, the elfish light Fell off in hoary flakes. Within the shadow of the ship I watched their rich attire: Blue, glossy green, and velvet black, They coiled and swam; and every track Was a flash of golden fire. O happy living things! no tongue Their beauty might declare: A spring of love gushed from my heart, And I blessed them unaware: Sure my kind saint took pity on me, And I blessed them unaware. The self-same moment I could pray; And from my neck so free The Albatross fell off, and sank Like lead into the sea. PART V Oh sleep! it is a gentle thing, Beloved from pole to pole! To Mary Queen the praise be given! She sent the gentle sleep from Heaven, That slid into my soul. The silly buckets on the deck, That had so long remained, I dreamt that they were filled with dew; And when I awoke, it rained. My lips were wet, my throat was cold, My garments all were dank; Sure I had drunken in my dreams, And still my body drank. I moved, and could not feel my limbs: I was so light—almost I thought that I had died in sleep, And was a blessed ghost. And soon I heard a roaring wind: It did not come anear; But with its sound it shook the sails, That were so thin and sere. The upper air burst into life! And a hundred fire-flags sheen, To and fro they were hurried about! And to and fro, and in and out, The wan stars danced between. And the coming wind did roar more loud, And the sails did sigh like sedge, And the rain poured down from one black cloud; The Moon was at its edge. The thick black cloud was cleft, and still The Moon was at its side: Like waters shot from some high crag, The lightning fell with never a jag, A river steep and wide. The loud wind never reached the ship, Yet now the ship moved on! Beneath the lightning and the Moon The dead men gave a groan. They groaned, they stirred, they all uprose, Nor spake, nor moved their eyes; It had been strange, even in a dream, To have seen those dead men rise. The helmsman steered, the ship moved on; Yet never a breeze up-blew; The mariners all 'gan work the ropes, Where they were wont to do; They raised their limbs like lifeless tools— We were a ghastly crew. The body of my brother's son Stood by me, knee to knee: The body and I pulled at one rope, But he said nought to me. 'I fear thee, ancient Mariner!' Be calm, thou Wedding-Guest! 'Twas not those souls that fled in pain, Which to their corses came again, But a troop of spirits blest: For when it dawned—they dropped their arms, And clustered round the mast; Sweet sounds rose slowly through their mouths, And from their bodies passed. Around, around, flew each sweet sound, Then darted to the Sun; Slowly the sounds came back again, Now mixed, now one by one. Sometimes a-dropping from the sky I heard the sky-lark sing; Sometimes all little birds that are, How they seemed to fill the sea and air With their sweet jargoning! And now 'twas like all instruments, Now like a lonely flute; And now it is an angel's song, That makes the heavens be mute. It ceased; yet still the sails made on A pleasant noise till noon, A noise like of a hidden brook In the leafy month of June, That to the sleeping woods all night Singeth a quiet tune. Till noon we quietly sailed on, Yet never a breeze did breathe: Slowly and smoothly went the ship, Moved onward from beneath. Under the keel nine fathom deep, From the land of mist and snow, The spirit slid: and it was he That made the ship to go. The sails at noon left off their tune, And the ship stood still also. The Sun, right up above the mast, Had fixed her to the ocean: But in a minute she 'gan stir, With a short uneasy motion— Backwards and forwards half her length With a short uneasy motion. Then like a pawing horse let go, She made a sudden bound: It flung the blood into my head, And I fell down in a swound. How long in that same fit I lay, I have not to declare; But ere my living life returned, I heard and in my soul discerned Two voices in the air. 'Is it he?' quoth one, 'Is this the man? By him who died on cross, With his cruel bow he laid full low The harmless Albatross. The spirit who bideth by himself In the land of mist and snow, He loved the bird that loved the man Who shot him with his bow.' The other was a softer voice, As soft as honey-dew: Quoth he, 'The man hath penance done, And penance more will do.' PART VI First Voice 'But tell me, tell me! speak again, Thy soft response renewing— What makes that ship drive on so fast? What is the ocean doing?' Second Voice Still as a slave before his lord, The ocean hath no blast; His great bright eye most silently Up to the Moon is cast— If he may know which way to go; For she guides him smooth or grim. See, brother, see! how graciously She looketh down on him.' First Voice 'But why drives on that ship so fast, Without or wave or wind?' Second Voice 'The air is cut away before, And closes from behind. Fly, brother, fly! more high, more high! Or we shall be belated: For slow and slow that ship will go, When the Mariner's trance is abated.' I woke, and we were sailing on As in a gentle weather: 'Twas night, calm night, the moon was high; The dead men stood together. All stood together on the deck, For a charnel-dungeon fitter: All fixed on me their stony eyes, That in the Moon did glitter. The pang, the curse, with which they died, Had never passed away: I could not draw my eyes from theirs, Nor turn them up to pray. And now this spell was snapt: once more I viewed the ocean green, And looked far forth, yet little saw Of what had else been seen— Like one, that on a lonesome road Doth walk in fear and dread, And having once turned round walks on, And turns no more his head; Because he knows, a frightful fiend Doth close behind him tread. But soon there breathed a wind on me, Nor sound nor motion made: Its path was not upon the sea, In ripple or in shade. It raised my hair, it fanned my cheek Like a meadow-gale of spring— It mingled strangely with my fears, Yet it felt like a welcoming. Swiftly, swiftly flew the ship, Yet she sailed softly too: Sweetly, sweetly blew the breeze— On me alone it blew. Oh! dream of joy! is this indeed The light-house top I see? Is this the hill? is this the kirk? Is this mine own countree? We drifted o'er the harbour-bar, And I with sobs did pray— O let me be awake, my God! Or let me sleep alway. The harbour-bay was clear as glass, So smoothly it was strewn! And on the bay the moonlight lay, And the shadow of the Moon. The rock shone bright, the kirk no less, That stands above the rock: The moonlight steeped in silentness The steady weathercock. And the bay was white with silent light, Till rising from the same, Full many shapes, that shadows were, In crimson colours came. A little distance from the prow Those crimson shadows were: I turned my eyes upon the deck— Oh, Christ! what saw I there! Each corse lay flat, lifeless and flat, And, by the holy rood! A man all light, a seraph-man, On every corse there stood. This seraph-band, each waved his hand: It was a heavenly sight! They stood as signals to the land, Each one a lovely light; This seraph-band, each waved his hand, No voice did they impart— No voice; but oh! the silence sank Like music on my heart. But soon I heard the dash of oars, I heard the Pilot's cheer; My head was turned perforce away And I saw a boat appear. The Pilot and the Pilot's boy, I heard them coming fast: Dear Lord in Heaven! it was a joy The dead men could not blast. I saw a third—I heard his voice: It is the Hermit good! He singeth loud his godly hymns That he makes in the wood. He'll shrieve my soul, he'll wash away The Albatross's blood. PART VII This Hermit good lives in that wood Which slopes down to the sea. How loudly his sweet voice he rears! He loves to talk with marineres That come from a far countree. He kneels at morn, and noon, and eve— He hath a cushion plump: It is the moss that wholly hides The rotted old oak-stump. The skiff-boat neared: I heard them talk, 'Why, this is strange, I trow! Where are those lights so many and fair, That signal made but now?' 'Strange, by my faith!' the Hermit said— 'And they answered not our cheer! The planks looked warped! and see those sails, How thin they are and sere! I never saw aught like to them, Unless perchance it were Brown skeletons of leaves that lag My forest-brook along; When the ivy-tod is heavy with snow, And the owlet whoops to the wolf below, That eats the she-wolf's young.' 'Dear Lord! it hath a fiendish look— (The Pilot made reply) I am a-feared'—'Push on, push on!' Said the Hermit cheerily. The boat came closer to the ship, But I nor spake nor stirred; The boat came close beneath the ship, And straight a sound was heard. Under the water it rumbled on, Still louder and more dread: It reached the ship, it split the bay; The ship went down like lead. Stunned by that loud and dreadful sound, Which sky and ocean smote, Like one that hath been seven days drowned My body lay afloat; But swift as dreams, myself I found Within the Pilot's boat. Upon the whirl, where sank the ship, The boat spun round and round; And all was still, save that the hill Was telling of the sound. I moved my lips—the Pilot shrieked And fell down in a fit; The holy Hermit raised his eyes, And prayed where he did sit. I took the oars: the Pilot's boy, Who now doth crazy go, Laughed loud and long, and all the while His eyes went to and fro. 'Ha! ha!' quoth he, 'full plain I see, The Devil knows how to row.' And now, all in my own countree, I stood on the firm land! The Hermit stepped forth from the boat, And scarcely he could stand. 'O shrieve me, shrieve me, holy man!' The Hermit crossed his brow. 'Say quick,' quoth he, 'I bid thee say— What manner of man art thou?' Forthwith this frame of mine was wrenched With a woful agony, Which forced me to begin my tale; And then it left me free. Since then, at an uncertain hour, That agony returns: And till my ghastly tale is told, This heart within me burns. I pass, like night, from land to land; I have strange power of speech; That moment that his face I see, I know the man that must hear me: To him my tale I teach. What loud uproar bursts from that door! The wedding-guests are there: But in the garden-bower the bride And bride-maids singing are: And hark the little vesper bell, Which biddeth me to prayer! O Wedding-Guest! this soul hath been Alone on a wide wide sea: So lonely 'twas, that God himself Scarce seemèd there to be. O sweeter than the marriage-feast, 'Tis sweeter far to me, To walk together to the kirk With a goodly company!— To walk together to the kirk, And all together pray, While each to his great Father bends, Old men, and babes, and loving friends And youths and maidens gay! Farewell, farewell! but this I tell To thee, thou Wedding-Guest! He prayeth well, who loveth well Both man and bird and beast. He prayeth best, who loveth best All things both great and small; For the dear God who loveth us, He made and loveth all. The Mariner, whose eye is bright, Whose beard with age is hoar, Is gone: and now the Wedding-Guest Turned from the bridegroom's door. He went like one that hath been stunned, And is of sense forlorn: A sadder and a wiser man, He rose the morrow morn.…
 
We’ve had illness in our family for the past week, so the New Year, 2025, is off to a rocky start. I had in mind a lovely Grammy-winning song to share for Sometimes a Song, but — sort of the way Kurt Weill describes it in his beautiful “September Song” — time got away from me. So I will leave you with a mystery song to look for next week. Some of our readers will guess immediately what song the word “year” brought to my mind. And in the meantime, I hope you will enjoy another wonderful and wistful tune about the passing of the days, months, and years, performed by the tremendous crooner, Tony Bennett. The composer of “September Song” was not a Tin Pan Alley songwriter, as were so many of the great popular composers of his time, although he did live in New York in the heyday of those writers and collaborated with lyricists such as Ira Gershwin and Oscar Hammerstein. Kurt Weill arrived in the United States in 1933, a refugee from — and target of — the Nazi madness which had descended on his native land. Once in the United States, he thoroughly embraced American musical theater, where he immediately found a welcome place for his considerable talent. Not just a classically trained composer, Kurt Weill had studied with some of the European masters of his day. In addition to composing music in all of the classical forms, Weill worked for decades on his project of “reforming opera” by introducing it into musical theater, a venue through which he hoped to bring high musical art to the masses. Fittingly, his most widely known work in America to this day comes from a musical version of John Gay’s The Beggar’s Opera , which Weill produced with Berthold Brecht, first in Germany and later in New York. Although The Threepenny Opera bombed on Broadway (closing after only 13 performances) a tune from the production went on to be one of the most-recorded songs in the panoply of America popular song, “Mack, the Knife” (" Die Moritat von Mackie Messer "). Oddly enough, “September Song,” which likewise became a part of The American Songbook , Weill wrote for another Broadway bust, Knickerbocker Holiday . It’s a tribute to Kurt Weill’s musical genius that he was able to compose such an immortal song while staying within the limited vocal range of Walter Huston, the show’s star. Necessity, in this case, was the mother of a remarkable piece of musical art. Upgrade to Paid Today at a Discount A final note about Kurt Weill : by no means were all of the musical plays he worked on bombs. In fact, he was among the inaugural winners of Broadway’s Tony Award (1947, for his score of Street Scene). The version above of “September Song” was recorded by Tony Bennett late in his career, as befits the song. His voice was still great, if a wee bit gravelly .. but just a wee bit. Share Word & Song by Anthony Esolen Word & Song by Anthony Esolen is a reader-supported online magazine devoted to reclaiming the good, the beautiful, and the true. To receive new posts and support this project, join us as a free or a paid subscriber. The “subscribe” button below will take you to an page which describes what is included in each of the subscription tiers. We value all of our subscribers, and we thank you for reading Word and Song!…
 
Christmastide is still here, and so are our Christmas offers at Word & Song! Upgrade Now or Give a Gift The more we’ve seen of films made either in England or the United States during that Golden Age, from about 1935 to 1965, the more it strikes us that a lot of them were set at Christmastime, and of those, quite a few were not about getting presents, but about giving of oneself during the holy season — and no one needed to be reminded that it was holy. There really are quite a few, far more than the ones you may be used to seeing re-run every year. Here is one, our Film of the Week , I’ll Be Seeing You. The situation again is one that calls upon one of the quieter forms of charity, which is tact, that “touch” that makes people comfortable, or that at least spares them pain. It’s the Christmas season, coming up on the New Year, and a young woman, Mary Marshall (Ginger Rogers) has been given a furlough from the state prison, where she is serving a six-year term for manslaughter. We aren’t told, until about twenty minutes into the film, any of the details of the crime, if indeed it was a crime at all. On the train back to Pinehill, where her aunt and uncle live — she does not have a home of her own — she happens to be sitting next to a sergeant just released from an army psychiatric ward. The second world war is on, and he’s been treated for shell-shock. We can pick up a little of his trouble in the twitching of his right hand, and his shyness, bordering on stolidity, whenever anybody tries to talk to him about the war. This fellow, Zack Morgan (Joseph Cotten), has no home, either. We later find out that he grew up in an orphanage. He and Mary have a nice conversation on that train, and when she tells him that she’s getting off at Pinehill, he says that that’s a coincidence, because that’s where he’s stopping too, to visit his sister. She’s told him that she’s a traveling saleslady. Well, he has no sister — he has to stay in a clean but bare room at the YMCA. And she is due back in prison in eight days. But she gives him her uncle’s name and address, and sure enough, the Marshalls being good and generous people, especially when it comes to the boys in uniform, they invite him over for supper. They have only a few days, but neither one knows about the condition of the other. Meanwhile, we’ve got Mary’s family, which include Uncle Henry (Tom Tully), Aunt Sarah (Spring Byington), and Mary’s cousin Barbara (Shirley Temple), a 17-year-old girl who is gaga for every soldier she sees. They try their hardest, and mostly succeed, in making Mary and then Zack feel welcome. But the clock is running. I’ve long said that I’d take Ginger Rogers over Fred Astaire any day of the week for acting and for singing; and Ginger could dance a little, too! I’ll Be Seeing You shows her at her best in a dramatic rather than comic role, and as for Joseph Cotten, his slight air of aristocratic gentility makes him a dead-on choice for the sensitive and lonely sergeant. Spring Byington and Tom Tully do not appear as if they are acting at all; it is as if they just stepped right into small town America. If you like to see the drama of goodness hurt by life but still good, this is a film for you. PS: If you love the song of the same name, as Debra does, you might recall her discussion of it here . Share this Post Gift Subscription at Discount A printable gift certificate is available below for your use! Word & Song by Anthony Esolen is an online magazine devoted to reclaiming the good, the beautiful, and the true. We publish six essays each week, on words, classic hymns, poems, films, and popular songs, as well a weekly podcast for paid subscribers, alternately Poetry Aloud or Anthony Esolen Speaks . Paid subscribers also receive audio-enhanced posts and on-demand access to our full archive, and may add their comments to our posts and discussions. To support this project, please join us as a free or paid subscriber. We value all of our subscribers, and we thank you for reading Word and Song! Right click on image to download for printing.…
 
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