“The Sun Has Long Been Set” is a poem written by the British poet William Wordsworth. The poem paints a beautiful and serene picture of a summer’s night in nature. Here we can be ourselves while enjoying the birds, trees, water and nightsky. Wordsworth suggests that the simple pleasure of being in nature surpasses that of a life in London.
I’ve only used a few instruments in this song; vocals, piano, guitar, strings and a celeste. I hope I managed to capture the poem’s peaceful feeling with the arrangement.
The album art is an illustration of two black-eared cuckoos by the British artist Elizabeth Gould (1804–1841).
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The Sun Has Long Been Set
By William Wordsworth
The sun has long been set,
The stars are out by twos and threes,
The little birds are piping yet
Among the bushes and trees;
There’s a cuckoo, and one or two thrushes,
And a far-off wind that rushes,
And a sound of water that gushes,
And the cuckoo’s sovereign cry
Fills all the hollow of the sky.
Who would “go parading”
In London, “and masquerading,”
On such a night of June
With that beautiful soft half-moon,
And all these innocent blisses?
On such a night as this is!
William Wodsworth
William Wordsworth was a British poet who lived between 1770 – 1850. Together with Samuel Taylor Coleridge he released a collection of poems called Lyrical Ballads, this book is considered to be the start of the British Romantic Era in English Literature.
With his poetry Wordsworth wanted to reflect on “incidents and situations from common life, and to relate or describe them, throughout, as far as was possible in a selection of language really used by men”.
Wordsworth was a poet laureate of the United Kingdom from 1843 until his death. A poet laureate was expected, but not required, to write verse for major national events.
Painting of William Wordsworth by the British artist Benjamin Robert Haydon (1786 – 1846).
