Here’s a poem by Sara Teasdale, an American poet of the first part of the 20th Century. I was actually planning to drop another piece using words by Teasdale today as part of my April National Poetry Month celebration, but I changed my plans and quickly worked up this one when I found out belatedly that Tom Rapp, songwriter and founder of the “transcendent folk” band Pearls Before Swine had died.
Rapp loved this poem, and set it to his own music in the 1960s. It was performed on Pearls Before Swine’s first album on ESP-Disk when he was still a teenager, and he later performed it along with his setting of of Shakespeare’s “Full Fathom Five” on another LP in the Seventies. I’ve always loved his version, and Rapp’s work in general, to this is a tribute to him. I didn’t use his music for my version today nor did I sing Teasdale’s words, as he did beautifully. His version is of course better, but I wanted to do this today anyway.