Poetry To Help The Aged

Do-Re-Mi (The Sound of Music), Oscar Hammerstein
…..(Richard Rodgers)
The Investment, Robert Frost
Homage: Doo-Wop, Joseph Stroud
Shall We Dance? (The King and I), Oscar Hammerstein
…..(Richard Rodgers)
The Dance, CK Williams
Turkey in the Straw
Better – than Music! Emily Dickinson
Proud Music of the Storm, Walt Whitman (excerpts)
Hey Mr. Tambourine Man, Bob Dylan
May We Stand Still, Priscilla Stern
To Joy, Friedrich Schiller (excerpt)

* * *

Holy Thursday, William Blake
The Bells, Edgar Allen Poe
Where Everything Is Music, Rumi
Joy To The World, Hoyt Axton (Three Dog Night)
I Am Really Just a Tambourine, Hafez
The Music of the Spheres, Billy Collins
The Reed Flute, Rumi

Do-Re-Mi (The Sound of Music)
by Oscar Hammerstein (Richard Rodgers)

You should get the text from another source.

The Investment
by Robert Frost

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Homage: Doo-Wop
by Joseph Stroud

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Shall We Dance? (The King and I)
by Oscar Hammerstein (Richard Rodgers)

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The Dance
by CK Williams

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Turkey In The Straw
(traditional)

Well, I had a little chicken and she wouldn’t lay an egg
So I rubbed hot water up and down her leg
And the little chicken hollered
And the little chicken begged
And the little chicken laid a hard boiled egg

CHORUS:
Turkey in the hay, in the hay, hay, hay!
Turkey in the straw, in the straw, straw, straw!
Pick ’em up, shake ’em up, any way at all,
And hit up a tune called ‘Turkey in the Straw’.

CHORUS

Well, I had an old hen and she had a wooden leg,
Just the best old hen that ever laid an egg,
She laid more eggs than any hen on the farm,
But another little drink wouldn’t do her any harm.

CHORUS

Well, if frogs had wings and snakes had hair,
And automobiles went flyin’ thro’ the air,
Well, if watermelons grew on a huckleberry vine,
We’d still have winter in the summer time.

CHORUS

Well, I come to the river and I couldn’t get across,
So I paid five dollars for an old blind horse,
Well, he wouldn’t go ahead and he wouldn’t stand still,
So he went up and down like an old saw mill.

CHORUS

Well, I had an old hen and she had a wooden leg,
And she begged for tobacco,
for tobacco she would beg
She went to the barber and said gimme a chew
No said the barber I’ll be darned if I do.
Wake up early in the morning, gather up your rocks
And you’ll always have tobacco in your own tobacco box

Better – than Music!
by Emily Dickinson

Better — than Music! For I — who heard it
I was used — to the Birds — before —
This — was different — ‘Twas Translation —
Of all tunes I knew — and more —

‘Twasn’t contained — like other stanza –
No one could play it — the second time —
But the Composer — perfect Mozart —
Perish with him — that Keyless Rhyme!

So — Children — told how Brooks in Eden —
Bubbled a better — Melody —
Quaintly infer — Eve’s great surrender —
Urging the feet — that would — not — fly —

Children — matured — are wiser — mostly —
Eden — a legend — dimly told —
Eve — and the Anguish — Grandame’s story —
But — I was telling a tune — I heard —

Not such a strain — the Church — baptizes —
When the last Saint — goes up the Aisles —
Not such a stanza splits the silence —
When the Redemption strikes her Bells —

Let me not spill — its smallest cadence —
Humming — for promise — when alone —
Humming — until my faint Rehearsal —
Drop into tune — around the Throne –

Proud Music of the Storm (excerpts)
by Walt Whitman

Proud music of the storm! . . . .
Entering my lonesome slumber-chamber –Why have you seiz’d me?

Come forward, O my Soul, and let the rest retire;
Listen — lose not — it is toward thee they tend;
Parting the midnight, entering my slumber-chamber,
For thee they sing and dance, O Soul . . . .

Ah, from a little child,
Thou knowest, Soul, how to me all sounds became music;
My mother’s voice, in lullaby or hymn . . . .
The rain, the growing corn, the breeze among the long-leav’d corn,
The measur’d sea-surf, beating on the sand,
The twittering bird, the hawk’s sharp scream,
The wild-fowl’s notes at night, as flying low, migrating north or south,
The psalm in the country church, or mid the clustering trees, the open air camp-meeting,
The fiddler in the tavern — the glee, the long-strung sailor-song,
The lowing cattle, bleating sheep — the crowing cock at dawn . . . .

Give me to hold all sounds, (I, madly struggling, cry)
Fill me with all the voices of the universe,
Endow me with their throbbings — Nature’s also,
The tempests, waters, winds — operas and chants — marches and
dances,
Utter — pour in — for I would take them all

Then I woke softly,
And pausing, questioning awhile the music of my dream,
And questioning all those reminiscences — the tempest in its fury,
And all the songs of sopranos and tenors,
And those rapt oriental dances, of religious fervor,
And the sweet varied instruments, and the diapason of organs,
And all the artless plaints of love, and grief and death,
I said to my silent, curious Soul, out of the bed of the slumber-
chamber,
Come, for I have found the clue I sought so long,
Let us go forth refresh’d amid the day,
Cheerfully tallying life, walking the world, the real,
Nourish’d henceforth by our celestial dream.

And I said, moreover,
Haply, what thou hast heard, O Soul, was not the sound of winds,
Nor dream of raging storm, nor sea-hawk’s flapping wings, nor harsh
scream,
Nor vocalism of sun-bright Italy,
Nor German organ majestic — nor vast concourse of voices — nor layers of harmonies;
Nor strophes of husbands and wives — nor sound of marching soldiers,
Nor flutes, nor harps, nor the bugle-calls of camps;
But, to a new rhythmus fitted for thee,
Poems, bridging the way from Life to Death, vaguely wafted in night
air, untaught, unwritten,
Which, let us go forth in the bold day, and write.

Hey Mr. Tambourine Man*
by Bob Dylan

Hey! Mr. Tambourine Man, play a song for me,
I’m not sleepy and there is no place I’m going to.
Hey! Mr Tambourine Man, play a song for me,
In the jingle jangle morning I’ll come followin’ you.

Though I know that evenin’s empire has returned into sand,
Vanished from my hand,
Left me blindly here to stand but still not sleeping.
My weariness amazes me, I’m branded on my feet,
I have no one to meet
And the ancient empty street’s too dead for dreaming.

Take me on a trip upon your magic swirlin’ ship,
My senses have been stripped, my hands can’t feel to grip,
My toes too numb to step, wait only for my boot heels
To be wanderin’.
I’m ready to go anywhere, I’m ready for to fade
Into my own parade, cast your dancing spell my way,
I promise to go under it.

Hey! Mr Tambourine Man, play a song for me,
I’m not sleepy and there is no place I’m going to.
Hey! Mr Tambourine Man, play a song for me,
In the jingle jangle morning I’ll come followin’ you.

Though you might hear laughin’, spinnin’, swingin’ madly across the sun,
It’s not aimed at anyone, it’s just escapin’ on the run
And but for the sky there are no fences facin’.
And if you hear vague traces of skippin’ reels of rhyme

To your tambourine in time, it’s just a ragged clown behind,
I wouldn’t pay it any mind, it’s just a shadow you’re
Seein’ that he’s chasing.

Then take me disappearin’ through the smoke rings of my mind,
Down the foggy ruins of time, far past the frozen leaves,
The haunted, frightened trees, out to the windy beach,
Far from the twisted reach of crazy sorrow.
Yes, to dance beneath the diamond sky with one hand waving free,
Silhouetted by the sea, circled by the circus sands,
With all memory and fate driven deep beneath the waves,
Let me forget about today until tomorrow.

* Used with the kind permission of Bob Dylan Music Company.

May We Stand Still
by Priscilla Stern

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To Joy (excerpt)
by Friedrich Schiller
(translated)

Joy, thou beauteous godly lightning,
Daughter of Elysium,
Fire drunken we are ent’ring
Heavenly, thy holy home!

Thy enchantments bind together,
What did custom’s sword divide,
Beggars are a prince’s brother,
Where thy gentle wings abide.

Chorus:
Be embrac’d, ye millions yonder!
Take this kiss throughout the world!
Brothers–o’er the stars unfurl’d
Must reside a loving Father.