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about
(english version below)
The Story of life ist ein Gedicht von John Godfrey Saxe aus dem 19. Jhd., das ich auf der Suche nach Gedichten zur Vertonung gefunden habe. Das Gedicht erzählt den Lebensweg eines Jungen, wie dieser erst als schreiendes Baby auf die Welt kommt und später alt und grau über sein Leben nachdenkt, bevor er in sein Grab fällt. Jeder Vers, auch der letzte, endet mit der Frage „and then?“. Diese Frage habe ich in einem Refrain noch einmal aufgenommen und ein wenig verstärkt.
Das Intro zu dem Stück stammt von Sebastian Jünger, mit dem ich eine Weile gemeinsam gespielt habe.
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The Story of life is a poem by John Godfrey Saxe from the 19th century, which I discovered while searching for poems to set to music. The poem is telling the Way of Life of a Boy, who is born in the world as a screaming baby and at the end, being old and grey, is thinking about his life before dropping into his grave. Every verse, even the last one, is ending with the open question "and then?". I added a refrain which supports this question.
The Intro to this piece is by Sebastian Jünger, with whom I played together for a while.
lyrics
Say, what is life? 'T is to be born;
A helpless Babe, to greet the light
With a sharp wail, as if the morn
Foretold a cloudy noon and night;
To weep, to sleep, and weep again,
With sunny smiles between; and then?
And then apace the infant grows
To be a laughing, puling boy,
Happy, despite his little woes,
Were he but conscious of his joy;
To be, in short, from two to ten,
A merry, moody Child; and then?
What do you want to achieve in life?
What is it that you wanna be?
And then, in coat and trousers clad,
To learn to say the Decalogue,
And break it; an unthinking Lad,
With mirth and mischief all agog;
A truant oft by field and fen
To capture butterflies; and then?
And then, increased in strength and size,
To be, anon, a Youth full-grown;
A hero in his mother's eyes,
A young Apollo in his own;
To imitate the ways of men
In fashionable sins; and then?
And then, at last, to be a Man;
To fall in love; to woo and wed;
With seething brain to scheme and plan;
To gather gold, or toil for bread;
To sue for fame with tongue or pen,
And gain or lose the prize; and then?
And then in gray and wrinkled Eld
To mourn the speed of life's decline;
To praise the scenes his youth beheld,
And dwell in memory of Lang-Syne;
To dream awhile with darkened ken,
Then drop into his grave; and then?
credits
from Crossfolk Avenue,
released November 4, 2016
Intro: Sebastian Jünger
Lyrics: John Godfrey Saxe, Chorus: Rick Krüger
Music: Rick Krüger
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