Dreaming, Piano Music Inspired by Timeless Poetry, is a Christian/New Age Piano/Classical Piano crossover album. The poems that inspired the music are included in the CD insert and below. David says about these poems, “The poems are intended to be read before each piece in performances, or the listener may read the poem silently as they hear the music.” The first three tracks are inspired by the Solomon’s “Song of Songs,” and the other tracks cover such Christian themes as Easter, hope, and rebirth and renewal.
The poems that inspired the music:
1. Song of Songs: A Glance of Your Eyes
“You are all fair, my love; there is no flaw in you…You have ravished my heart, my bride, you have ravished my heart with a glance of your eyes.”4:8-9
2. Song of Songs: Come with Me
“Come, my beloved, let us go forth into the fields, and lodge in the villages; let us go out early to the vineyards, and see whether the vines have budded.” 7:11-12
3. Song of Songs: A Lily of the Valley
“O that you would kiss me with the kisses of your mouth.” 1:2
4. Skylark
Higher still and higher
From the earth thou springest,
Like a cloud of fire;
The blue deep thou wingest,
And singing still dost soar and soaring ever singest.
The pale purple even
Melts around thy flight;
Like a star of heaven,
In the broad daylight
Thou art unseen, but yet I hear thy shrill delight.
Teach us, sprite or bird,
What sweet thoughts are thine:
I have never heard
Praise of love or wine
That panted forth a flood of rapture so divine.
-Percy Shelley, from “Ode to a Skylark”
5. Memory and Me
"O memory, where is now my youth,
Who used to say that life was truth?"
"I saw him in a crumbled cot
Beneath a tottering tree;
That he as phantom lingers there
Is only known to me."
"O Memory, where is now my joy,
Who lived with me in sweet employ?"
"I saw him in gaunt gardens lone,
Where laughter used to be;
That he as phantom wanders there
Is known to none but me."
"O Memory, where is now my love,
That rayed me as a god above?"
"I saw him by an ageing shape
Where beauty used to be;
That his fond phantom lingers there
Is only known to me."
-Thomas Hardy, from “Memory and I”
6. Moonbeam
Sleep, little pigeon, and fold your wings,--
Little blue pigeon with velvet eyes;
Sleep to the singing of mother-bird swinging--
Swinging the nest where her little one lies.
Away out yonder I see a star,--
Silvery star with a tinkling song;
To the soft dew falling I hear it calling--
Calling and tinkling the night along.
In through the window a moonbeam comes,--
Little gold moonbeam with misty wings;
All silently creeping, it asks, "Is he sleeping--
Sleeping and dreaming while mother sings?"
-Eugene Field, from “Japanese Lullaby”
7. Easter
The air is like a butterfly
With frail blue wings.
The happy earth looks at the sky
And sings.
-Alfred Joyce Kilmer, “Easter”
8. Sleeping Swans
Night is over the park, and a few brave stars
Look on the lights that link it with chains of gold,
The lake bears up their reflection in broken bars
That seem too heavy for tremulous water to hold.
We watch the swans that sleep in a shadowy place,
And now and again one wakes and uplifts its head;
How still you are, your gaze is on my face,
We watch the swans and never a word is said.
-Sara Teasdale, “Swans”
9. The First Faint Star
The river sleeps beneath the sky,
And clasps the shadows to its breast;
The crescent moon shines dim on high;
And in the lately radiant west
The gold is fading into gray.
Now stills the lark his festive lay,
And mourns with me the dying day.
While in the south the first faint star
Lifts to the night its silver face,
And twinkles to the moon afar
Across the heaven's graying space.
-Paul Laurence Dunbar, from “Sunset”
10. The Piano
Softly, in the dusk, a woman is singing to me;
Taking me back down the vista of years, till I see
A child sitting under the piano, in the boom of the tingling strings
And pressing the small, poised feet of a mother who smiles as she sings.
The glamour of childish days is upon me, my manhood is cast
Down in the flood of remembrance, I weep like a child for the past.
-D.H. Lawerence, from “Piano”
11. Hope
Our lives, discoloured with our present woes,
May still grow white and shine with happier hours.
So the pure limped stream, when foul with stains
Of rushing torrents and descending rains,
Works itself clear, and as it runs refines,
till by degrees the floating mirror shines;
Reflects each flower that on the border grows,
And a new heaven in its fair bosom shows.
-Joseph Addison, “Hope”
12. Snow-Flakes
I wonder what they are,
These pretty, wayward things,
That o'er the gloomy earth
The wind of heaven flings.
Each one a tiny star,
And each a perfect gem;
What magic in the art
That thus has fashioned them.
What beauty in the flake
That falls upon my hand;
And yet this tiny thing
My will cannot command.
So dainty and so pure,
How beautiful they are;
And yet the slightest touch
Their purity may mar.
They must be gazed upon,
Not handled or caressed;
And thus we hold afar
The things we love the best.
-Fanni Isabelle Sherrick, from “Snow-Flakes”
13. Dawn
Moments that holds all moments; white upon
The verge it trembles; then like mists of flowers
Break from the fairy fountain of the dawn
The hues of many hours.
-George William Russell, from “Dawn”
14. Autumn Leaves
There was a sound of music low--
An undertone of laughter;
The song was done, and can't you guess
The words that followed after?
Like autumn leaves sometimes they fall--
The words that burn and falter;
And is it true they too must fade
Upon Love's sacred alter?
From memory each one of us
Can cull some sweetest treasure;
Yet golden days, like golden leaves,
Give pain as well as pleasure.
There was a sound of music low--
An undertone of laughter:
The sun was gone--yet heaven knew
The stars that followed after.
-Fannie Isabelle Sherrick, “Falling Leaves”
15. Dreaming
The moan of a wintry soul
Melted into a summer song,
And the words, like the wavelet's roll,
Moved murmuringly along.
And the song flowed far and away,
Like the voice of a half-sleeping rill --
Each wave of it lit by a ray --
But the sound was so soft and so still,
And the tone was so gentle and low,
None heard the song till it had passed;
Till the echo that followed its flow
Came dreamingly back from the past.
'Twas too late! -- a song never returns
That passes our pathway unheard;
As dust lying dreaming in urns
Is the song lying dead in a word.
For the birds of the skies have a nest,
And the winds have a home where they sleep,
And songs, like our souls, need a rest,
Where they murmur the while we may weep.
* * * * *
But songs -- like the birds o'er the foam,
Where the storm wind is beating their breast,
Fly shoreward -- and oft find a home
In the shelter of words where they rest.
-Abram Joseph Ryan, “Dreaming”
Read more...