A Little Night Music

The Banjo Lesson  Henry Ossawa Tanner 

Dream Variations 

by Langston Hughes

To fling my arms wide

In some place of the sun,

To whirl and to dance

Till the white day is done.

Then rest at cool evening

Beneath a tall tree

While night comes on gently,

Dark like me-

That is my dream!

To fling my arms wide

In the face of the sun,

Dance! Whirl! Whirl!

Till the quick day is done.

Rest at pale evening...

A tall, slim tree...

Night coming tenderly

Black like me.

Ivories Tickling Memories

Madame Misia Godebska Natanson  Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec

Piano
by D. H. Lawrence 

Softly, in the dusk, a woman is singing to me;

Taking me back down the vista of years, till I see
A child sitting under the piano, in the boom of the tingling strings
And pressing the small, poised feet of a mother who smiles as she sings.

In spite of myself, the insidious mastery of song
Betrays me back, till the heart of me weeps to belong
To the old Sunday evenings at home, with winter outside
And hymns in the cosy parlour, the tinkling piano our guide.

So now it is vain for the singer to burst into clamour
With the great black piano appassionato. The glamour
Of childish days is upon me, my manhood is cast
Down in the flood of remembrance, I weep like a child for the past.