Just home from a lovely lake walk after a Sunday rehearsal for our upcoming choral festival. One of the selections we're doing is an exquisite modern setting of the Harlem Renaissance poet~Paul Laurence Dunbar.
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,
Low murmurs reach me from the town,
As Day puts on her sombre crown,
And shakes her mantle darkly down.
How lovely to see Dunbar being memorized - even though I doubt the students have had too much time to know anything about him. Probably the best way to get kids and poetry together, via music.
ReplyDeleteI 'maaade' them do a character sketch for the Rossini cat piece we're doing, as well as a literary analysis of this poem~you'd think I'd sentenced them a life of digging ditches with the whinging.
DeleteBut! They all pretty much came up with some lovely poetic insights from the song/poem!
I also completely ignored the issue of middle schoolers having to sing 'breast' and they all have dealt with it with maturity.
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