Sunday Love Songs ! feat. SMOOTH TOAD !

click to hear: ASK THE RIVER by Smooth Toad recorded a few days ago in  G. P. Skratz’s living room by SMOOTH TOAD:  Hal Hughes, vocal & guitar; Bob Ernst, country harp; G. P. Skratz, guitar.

ASK THE RIVER
(words & music by Hal Hughes)

If you don’t know
Why the moon hides its glow Behind the clouds
It’s just because
It’s up there all alone

If you don’t know
Why the willow weeps all day It’s just because
There’s no one there
To wipe its tears away

Bridge:
If you should ask the river
Why it flows unto the sea
You’d understand why I keep
Running back to you
Now don’t you see

When I’m alone
There is only one way home My love, it’s true
That winding road
That calls me back to you

 

click to hear: LA BELLE DAME SANS MERCI by Smooth Toad This SMOOTH TOAD performance features G. P. Skratz on vocal & guitar, Hal Hughes on fiddle, & Bob Ernst on percussion.

This is my setting of John Keats’s “La Belle Dame sans Merci.” I made a few edits here & there & tweaked a few lines:  eg he has, “And there she lulled me asleep, / And there I dreamed, Ah Woe Betide! / The latest dream I ever dreamt / On the cold hill side.”  Really, Johnny?  “The latest dream I ever dreamt”?  Happily, I’m able to cover for him here in the 21st century… G.P. Skratz

LA BELLE DAME SANS MERCI

O what can ail thee, Knight at arms,

Alone & palely loitering?

The sedge has withered from the Lake

& no birds sing!

m

I see a lily on thy brow

With anguish moist & fever dew,

& on thy cheeks a fading rose

Fast withereth too.

*

I met a Lady in the Meads,

Full beautiful, a faery’s child,

Her hair was long, her foot light

& her eyes were wild.

m

She found me roots of relish sweet,

& honey wild, & manna dew,

& sure in language strange, she said

“I love thee true.”

m

She took me to her elfin grot

& there she wept & sighed full sore,

& there I shut her wild wild eyes

With kisses four.

m

& there she lulléd me asleep,

& there I dreamed, Ah Woe betide!

The dream that beat my beating heart

Beneath the cold hill side.

m

I saw pale Kings, pale Princes too,

Pale warriors, death-pale were they all;

They cried, “La belle dame sans merci

Thee hath in thrall!”

m

I saw their starved lips in the gloam

With horrid warning gapéd wide,

& I awoke, & found me here

On the cold hill side.

m

Alone & loitering

& palely loitering

& no birds sing

& no birds sing

SMOOTH TOAD is@ MySpace