Summer Wine

Strawberries, cherries and an angel's kiss in spring My summer wine is really made from all these things Take off your silver spurs and help me pass the time And I will give to you summer wine Oh, oh summer wine I walked in town on silver spurs that jingled to A song that I had only sang to just a few She saw my silver spurs and said let's pass some time And I will give to you summer wine Oh, oh summer wine Strawberries, cherries and an angel's kiss in spring My summer wine is really made from all these things Take off your silver spurs and help me pass the time And I will give to you summer wine Oh, oh summer wine My eyes grew heavy and my lips they could not speak I tried to get up but I couldn't find my feet She reassured me with an unfamiliar line And then she gave to me more summer wine Oh, oh summer wine Strawberries cherries and an angel's kiss in spring My summer wine is really made from all these things Take off your silver spurs and help me pass the time And I will give to you summer wine Mmm-mm summer wine When I woke up the sun was shining in my eyes My silver spurs were gone, my head felt twice its size She took my silver spurs, a dollar and a dime And left me cravin' for more summer wine Oh, oh summer wine Strawberries, cherries and an angel's kiss in spring My summer wine is really made from all these things Take off your silver spurs and help me pass the time And I will give to you my summer wine Originally the B side to Nancy Sinatra and Lee Hazelwood's single "Sugar Town" in 1967 its lyric in the old tradition inhabited by Keats La Belle Damme Sans Merci and Coleridge's Christabel. Our filmed recording of our version coincided with the brief heatwave of June 2024 which might turn out to be the summer. Get it while it's hot!

Tyger Tyger!

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Tyger, burning bright, In the forests of the night; What immortal hand or eye, Could frame thy fearful symmetry? In what distant deeps or skies. Burnt the fire of thine eyes? On what wings dare he aspire? What the hand, dare seize the fire? And what shoulder, & what art, Could twist the sinews of thy heart? And when thy heart began to beat. What dread hand? & what dread feet? Tyger Tyger, burning bright, In the forests of the night; What immortal hand or eye, Could frame thy fearful symmetry? What the hammer? what the chain, In what furnace was thy brain? What the anvil? what dread grasp. Dare its deadly terrors clasp? When the stars threw down their spears And water'd heaven with their tears: Did he smile his work to see? Did he who made the Lamb make thee? Tyger Tyger burning bright, In the forests of the night: What immortal hand or eye, Dare frame thy fearful symmetry? The self-styled "Author and Printer" William Blake (1757-1827) earned his living as an Engraver and Illustrator, working for (among others) Mary Wollstonecraft and the famous (and Laureate-refusing) 18C poet Thomas Gray. He engages profoundly with the 18C and the Enlightenment, largely refuting its reasoned, deist, classical, Locke-Newton Universe with its measured symmetry and clockwork precisions in favour of an emotive Romantic Bible-based Christian mysticism (and against the Augustan preference for formal control, wit and Graeco-Roman reason) but also very much a part of the Radical 18C London which embraced Wilkes and Liberty and the American and French Revolutions. Of all the Romantic poets (with the possible exception of Burns working the plough on his own farm) he was the only who had a trade, who worked with his hands, as an artisan involved in cottage industry. His writing - notably the long Biblical prophetic Books - is full of the imagery of hammering and smelting. He used "a method of printing which combines the Painter and the Poet" "a method of Printing both Letter-press and Engraving in a style more ornamental, uniform, and grand, than any before discovered". It involved a concern with having beautiful wove paper and ink, translucent and opaque water colours, manipulating the copper surfaces of his plates, varnish and corrosive fires (aqua fortis) which etched valleys around the exposed cliffs. The symmetry in "The Tyger" is much wilder and weirder than that of Newton's measured and (to Blake) circumscribed Universe. Blake portrayed this Universe in a painting called "The Ancient of Days" which critiques the God represented in the new 18C Cowper-Wesley "Olney Hymns" as a character called Urizen ("Your reason not mine) bent blindly over a brilliant coloured Universe which he is measuring (and containing) with a pair of 17/18C compasses. The compasses are definitely off and hurled burning into the distant deeps and skies of Creation here. There is a spoken word version of this though with musical accompaniment. on https://peacocks-tale.bandcamp.com/track/tyger-1 Blake's visionary genius extended to two usually separate art forms and though the words can stand alone and the art resonates on its own as well, the complete experience is to see his visions/ poems in full colour. Our combined arts tribute is to present the spoken words in this musical wash in which everything - included the spoken poem - is keyed into the harmonium drone. This is the sung version. Blake also sang and there is a lot of musical reference in his writing. The Songs of Innocence and Experience from which "The Tyger" is taken have Introductions featuring a cheerful Piper "piping songs of pleasant glee"(Innocence) and the sadder voice of a Bard "calling the lapsed Soul" (Experience). "The Lamb" with its "tender voice" appears in 'the "Songs of Innocence', the "Tyger" in the "Songs of Experience." This track develops the tune of the refrain in Tyger 1 into a full verse and chorus song again all keyed into the C drone of the harmonium.