To Bed/A Lantern [de la Mare poems set to music]
Channel: tobydarling
Date: 27/10/2021

To Bed (Walter de la Mare)

Am G F Am
Candle lank and lean and pale
Am Em Am
Light me to bed
Am G F Em
Rearing aloft thy flaming hair
Dm F E7
Above thy head

Am/D Gm/D Bb/D Dm
Red is the tip of thy long nose;
A7 Dm
As if from weeping
Am Dm A7
Tears that shall in the night congeal
F C E7
When I am sleeping.

Up, up the peevish stair we go;
Silent as death
They smoke trails back along the aire
Like frosty breath.

Circling around thy tapering head
Pale colours bloom,
While shadows watch thee from their lair
Of ghostly gloom.

At every wink they crouch and spring -
I conjure thee
Droop not a languid eyelid till
In bed I be

And while the mice making romping stir,
I do not entreat
Twine not thy spectral body with
A winding sheet.

A Em
But steadfast as a sentinel,
A Em
Vigilant, stark,
F Am E7
Guard thou the battlements of light
Am Em Am
Against the dark

A Lantern

Dm/A Am7
A lantern lighted me to bed
Am7/F Gm
Because I had no candle;
Bb A7
Across the frozen fields it shone
Dm Am
And danced upon the Wandle.

Cock Robin in the icy hedge,
Nor blackbird, bill in feather,
Nor snail tucked snug in close-shut house
Dm A7
Will ever now know whether

F C D/Bb
A lantern lighted me to bed
Bb C Dm
Because I had no candle;
F C A7
And from my frozen window-pane
Gm C Dm
Beamed clean across the Wandle.



Am/D: xx0555
Gm/D: xx0333
Bb/D: xx0331

Dm/A x0776x
Am7: x0555x
Am7/F: x0355x
D/Bb: 657xxx

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