In honor of the birthday of Irish poet William Butler Yeats (1865-1939), here is Z. Randall Stroope’s choral setting of Yeat’s poem “The Cloths of Heaven.”
Had I the heavens’ embroidered cloths,
Enwrought with golden and silver light,
The blue and the dim and the dark cloths
Of night and light and the half light,
I would spread the cloths under your feet:
But I, being poor, have only my dreams;
I have spread my dreams under your feet;
Tread softly because you tread on my dreams.
Home sweet home
Bob's sister Hannah
Bob's sister Ada
Bob's brother Otto
Bob's sister Eve
Bob's sister Nan
A baby picture of Bob and his siblings (clockwise from upper left: Otto, Eve, Hannah, Ada, Bob, and Nan)
Bob's childhood home
Bob's mom and dad
Bob in his youth
Bob's cousin Alphonse
Bob's Uncle Ralph and Aunt Edna
Bob's cousin Archibald
Bob's stepbrother Herbie (who really needs to quit smoking)
Bob's cousin Chester
Bob's Great Uncle Norbert and Great Aunt Phyllis
Bob's cousin Saffron (who will do anything for a drink)
Bob's sister-in-law Sybil
Bob's cousin Thorndike
Bob's brother-in-law Vinnie
Bob's cousin Orville, who loves the Green Bay Packers
Bob's nieces Lulu and Bitsy, the biker chicks
Bob's stepsister Eloise, with the twins, Rudy and Trudy
Bob's Uncle Henry and Aunt Rowena
Bob's niece Esmerelda (who likes to live dangerously)
Bob's Great Uncle Arthur up in Saskatchewan
Bob's cousin Louie, the grackle of grumpiness
Miss Screech, Bob's journalism teacher
Bob's nephew Winthrop, who loves sports
Bob's Uncle Seymour and Aunt Bernice
Bob's second cousin Schlomo in Brooklyn
Bob's nephew Baxter
Bob's cousin Darrell
Nigel, Bob's pen pal in New Zealand
Bob's sister-in-law Delphine, who volunteers at the animal shelter
Percy the Pickpocket, Bob's third cousin once removed (the relative no one likes to talk about... every family has one)
The Bluebird of Happiness™ (no relation to Bob)
A pair of boobies (also no relation to Bob, but included for readers who desire titillation)
A pair of tits (in case the boobies were insufficiently titillating)
Bluebird Bitter™, the beer they named for Bob
You just don’t encounter “enwrought” in everyday parlance anymore.
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Lovely. Happy Birthday, William. 🙂 — Suzanne
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I’ve met Z. Randall Stroope! My chorus commissioned a piece from him some years back, and he came up for the concert weekend.
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What fun! 🙂
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