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My setting of a poem by John Keats. It is scored for soprano voice and piano.
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Charts
Peak #57
Peak in subgenre #14
Author
Music by Sean Damon, Words by John Keats
Rights
Copyright 1990 DamonMusic by Sean Damon Rohde
Uploaded
July 25, 2019
MP3
MP3 6.2 MB, 128 kbps, 6:48
Story behind the song
This setting of a poem entitled TO SLEEP by John Keats is one of several I made in the late 1980s--early 90s when I was reading a lot of the English romantics. As a sonnet, it was difficult to work into song form since the lines do not read like lyrics. When setting already established poems to music, as I frequently do, it can be quite challenging to “wed” the music to the words in a way that sounds natural. I remember having one hell of a time putting this one together.
Lyrics
O soft embalmer of the still midnight, Shutting, with careful fingers and benign, Our gloom-pleas’d eyes, embower’d from the light, Enshaded in forgetfulness divine; O soothest Sleep! if so it please thee, close In midst of this thine hymn, my willing eyes, Or wait the Amen, ere thy poppy throws Around my bed its lulling charities; Then save me, or the passed day will shine Upon my pillow, breeding many woes; Save me from curious conscience, that still lords Its strength for darkness, burrowing like a mole; Turn the key deftly in the oiled wards, And seal the hushed casket of my soul.
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