FMJ - The Cost of Change

Robert Blake, "Songs of Innocence"

Piping down the valleys wild,

Piping songs of pleasant glee,

On a cloud I saw a child,

And he laughing said to me:

‘Pipe a song about a Lamb!’

So I piped with merry cheer.

‘Piper, pipe that song again.’

So I piped: he wept to hear.

‘Drop thy pipe, thy happy pipe;

Sing thy songs of happy cheer:’

So I sung the same again,

While he wept with joy to hear.

‘Piper, sit thee down and write

In a book, that all may read.’

So he vanish'd from my sight;

And I pluck'd a hollow reed,

And I made a rural pen,

And I stained the water clear,

And I wrote my happy songs

Every child may joy to hear.

Songs of Experience

Hear the voice of the Bard,

Who present, past, and future, sees;

Whose ears have heard

The Holy Word

That walked among the ancient trees;

Calling the lapséd soul,

And weeping in the evening dew;

That might control

The starry pole,

And fallen, fallen light renew!

‘O Earth, O Earth, return!

Arise from out the dewy grass!

Night is worn,

And the morn

Rises from the slumbrous mass.

‘Turn away no more;

Why wilt thou turn away?

The starry floor,

The watery shore,

Is given thee till the break of day.’

Alfred Lord Tennyson, "Break, Break Break"

Break, break, break,

On thy cold gray stones, O Sea!

And I would that my tongue could utter

The thoughts that arise in me.

O, well for the fisherman's boy,

That he shouts with his sister at play!

O, well for the sailor lad,

That he sings in his boat on the bay!

And the stately ships go on

To their haven under the hill;

But O for the touch of a vanish'd hand,

And the sound of a voice that is still!

Break, break, break

At the foot of thy crags, O Sea!

But the tender grace of a day that is dead

Will never come back to me.