Thunder/The Shepherd/High [de la Mare poems set to music]
Channel: tobydarling
Date: 2024-04-06

Thunder (Walter de la Mare)

Em D
Call the cows home!
Am G
Call the cows home!
Em D
Louring storm clouds
C G
Hitherward come;
D Am
East to West
C Bm
Their wings are spread;
D Am
Lost in the blue
C G
Is each heaven-high head;
They’ve dimmed the sun;
Turned day to night;
Wi9th a whistling wind
The woods are white;
Down streams the rain
On farm, barn, byre,
Bright green hill,
And bramble and brier’
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Filling the valley
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With glimmer and gloom:
Em D
Call the cows home!
C Em
Call the cows home!

The Shepherd

Am Em
When I was out one morning – 
Am Em
In a meadow, white with sheep,
B7
Lay a shepherd by a haystack
Em Am Em
Fast asleep

With me the lark was carolling,
There was gold and green and blue;
But what, you drowsy shepherd,
Was with you?

Dm Am C G
Was it night and water gushing
F Em
And moonbeams cold and clear
G Am Bm C
On the softly silver-slipping
B7
Dripping weir?

Was it childhood, was it sweetheart,
Was it distant isles and seas,
Day of Judgement, Harvest Home, or
Bread and cheese?

High

C F/A C F/A
Fly, kite!
High!
C G Am
Till you touch the sky!
Dm Am Dm Em
Stoop, whistling in the wind;
F C Dm
And whisper for the quivering string
C F/A C F/A
If, as you soar, you find
C G Am
The world we tread is like a ball-
Dm Am Dm Am
With mounds for hills, and ponds for seas,
Am G Am
Its oxen small as creeping bees,
F C Dm
Mere bushes its huge trees!

F G Am
But ah, the dew begins to fall,
F G Am
The evening star to shine,

C G Am
Down you must sink to earth again – 
C G Am
An earth, I mean, like mine.

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