VOA慢速英语:春之歌描述了春之百态

Songs of Spring Describe Her Many Moods

From VOA Learning English, welcome to This IsAmerica. I’m Steve Ember.

If you’ve checked your calendar lately, you know - atleast in the northern part of the world – it’s spring. And,after a long winter, it’s time to celebrate.

Spring brings new growth to trees along the Susquehanna River in Maryland

Hey, buds below

Up is where to grow

Up, from which below can’t compare with…

Now, your English teacher might have had a problemwith that phrase, but let’s keep listening, shall we?

Life down a hole takes an awful toll,

What with not a soul there to share with

If you’re wondering what those words are all about, she is singing to her flowerpots.

Hurry, it’s lovely up here

Wake up, bestir yourself

It’s time that you disinter yourself…

Actress Barbara Harris in the musical “On a Clear Day, You Can SeeForever” by Alan Jay Lerner and Burton Lane.

And what a gift package of showers, sun and love

You'll be met above everywhere with

Fondled and sniffed by millions who drift by…

And spring being the season of new growth, I hope that song, and all theothers we’re going to play for you, will paint a musical picture of this lovelyseason. Come along with us!

Come poke your head out!

Open up and spread out!

Hurry, it's lovely here!

She sometimes is slow to arrive…

Sometimes spring comes slowly – that was certainly the case this year. Itseems like we wear our winter clothes for a long, long time. The weatherstays cold…snow stays on the ground. Trees still look bare. Everything ischanging, but we may not see the changes from day to day.

Early spring brings vivid greens to this forest setting in northern Maryland (Steve Ember)

And then suddenly, warmth seems to jump up from theearth overnight. Snow becomes a memory. Treebranches fill out. The gray and brown colors of wintergive way to the green of spring. That’s the spiritexpressed here by the New Christy Minstrels.

Springtime, change of scenery, won’t that be fine

Springtime, the grass is greener

And the berry grows redder on the vine

Into each life, there will come sunshine, sometime afterthe rain

Don’t be downhearted, before tears get started,

Let Springtime make you smile again.

You know that Springtime, change of scenery, won’t that be fine

Springtime, the grass is greener

And the berry grows redder on the vine.

Springtime, change of scenery…Spring is a wonderfulseason to celebrate rebirth and new life. The sun is outagain, the daylight stays around longer…the flowers areblooming. The season represents hope, joy and beauty.

However, not all songs about spring are happy. This song by K.D. Lang isabout dreaming of spring in cold dark places. She recorded "I Dream ofSpring" in two thousand eight.

She arrives like autumn in a rainstorm

The threat of thunder above

I'll return from the streets of Melbourne

I'll return my love

This world is filled with frozen lovers

The sheets of their beds are frightfully cold

And I've slept there in the snow with others

Yet loved no others before

These cold dark places

Places I've been

In cold dark places

I dream of spring

Springtime inspires lasting popular song…

Unlike the other seasons, there are not many rock songs about spring. Most of the songs about this season were written in the nineteen thirties and forties byfamous American composers writing for the Broadway stage or Hollywoodfilms or popular vocalists. The songs became "standards," popular songsrecorded by many singers over the years.

If you’re a young person, this may surprise you, but this was the popularmusic of its day.

Have you ever had “Spring Fever?”

Here is one example, "It Might as Well Be Spring."Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein wrote thesong for the movie "State Fair" in 1945. Frank Sinatrasings about having "spring fever." This is not a realsickness. It is a feeling of restlessness or excitementbrought on by the coming of spring.

I'm as restless as a willow in a windstorm,

A young Frank Sinatra, surrounded by fans at about the time he recorded "It Might As Well Be Spring"

I'm as jumpy as a puppet on a string,

I'd say that I had spring fever,

But I know it isn't spring.

I am starry eyed and vaguely discontented,

Like a nightingale without a song to sing.

Oh, why should I have spring fever,

When it isn't even spring?

I keep wishing I were somewhere else,

Walking down a strange new street,

Hearing words I have never heard,

From a girl I've yet to meet.

I'm as busy as a spider, spinning daydreams,

I'm as giddy as a baby on a swing,

I haven't seen a crocus or a rosebud,

Or a robin or a bluebird on the wing,

But I feel so gay in a melancholy way,

That it might as well be spring,

It might as well be, might as well be,

It might as well be spring.

A sad side to Spring…

Richard Rodgers also wrote "Spring Is Here." But this time, the words were bylyricist Lorenz Hart. They were tender…but sad. The singer wants to feelhappy in the new season, but can’t, because something very important inlife…is missing. Ella Fitzgerald had one of the loveliest versions of this classicRodgers and Hart song.

Once there was a thing called spring

When the world was writing verses like yours and mine.

All the lads and girls would sing

When we sat at little tables and drank May wine.

Now April May and June are sadly out of tune

Life has stuck the pin in the balloon.

Spring is here!

Why doesn’t my heart go dancing?

Spring is here!

Why isn’t the waltz entrancing?

A "Lazy Afternoon in Central Park" as it looked about the time Tony Bennett recorded "Spring in Manhattan"

No desire, no ambition leads me,

Maybe it’s because nobody needs me.

Spring is here…

New York has inspired so many wonderful – and timeless – songs, includingthose about the vibrant city in the various seasons of the year. My favorite isVernon Duke’s “Autumn in New York.” And if you’ll write a note on yourcalendar to join us in September when autumn arrives, we have a date tolisten to it together. But, for now, here’s Tony Bennett.

Spring in Manhattan starts after dark

After a lazy afternoon in Central Park

Washington Square may be where you’ll feel her first warm touch

Down in the Village, you’ll find she may be much too much

Spring in Manhattan never stays long

Still, if you fall in love, she’ll bless you with a song

And if you listen to every word the song she’ll sing will bring

Spring in Manhattan to stay all winter long.

Just thinking about all the wonderful songs of New York, I realize we couldactually do a program of New York songs. If you’d like to hear such a programon “This Is America,” be in touch – let us know!

Have an umbrella handy – After all, it’s Spring…

You know, we have a saying, “April showers bring May flowers.” And, ofcourse, showers happen throughout springtime, and certainly do their part inbringing out the flowers and making the trees turn a beautiful shade of green.

Here is a very gentle song about those springtime showers, from the musical“The Fantasticks.”

Soon it's gonna rain.

I can see it.

Soon it's gonna rain.

I can tell.

Soon it's gonna rain.

What're we gonna do?

Soon it's gonna rain.

I can see it.

Soon it's gonna rain.

I can tell.

Soon it's gonna rain.

What'll we do with you?

We'll find four limbs of a tree.

We'll build four walls and a floor.

We'll bind it over with leaves,

And run inside to stay.

Then we'll let it rain.

We'll not feel it.

Then we'll let it rain,

Rain pell-mell.

And we'll not complain

If it never stops at all.

We'll live and love

Within our own four walls.

Kenneth Nelson and Rita Gardner…“Soon It’s Gonna Rain” from Tom Jonesand Harvey Schmidt’s “The Fantasticks.”

When Spring comes late…

Frank Loesser wrote a sad song about spring - "SpringWill be a Little Late This Year." Why has the seasonbeen delayed? Because the singer's lover has left her.Sarah Vaughan released her version of the song in 1953.

Spring will be a little late this year

A Sept. 25, 1952 photo of Sarah Vaughan. (AP Photo/ho)

A little late arriving in my lonely world over here

For you have left me and where is our April of old?

You have left me, and winter continues cold

As if to say spring will be a little slow to start

A little slow reviving that music it made in my heart

Yes, time heals all things so I needn't cling to this fear

It's merely that spring will be a little late this year

Yes, time heals all things so I needn't cling to this fear

It's merely that spring will be a little late, a little late thisyear

Well, by now you may be thinking: "Enough with the sad songs, already!" OK,then how about a cowboy song? Gene Autry was one of America's mostfamous singing cowboys. In 1937, he recorded "When It's Springtime in theRockies."

When it's springtime in the Rockies

I'm coming back to you

Little sweetheart of the mountains

With your bonnie eyes of blue

Once again I'll say I love you

While the birds sing all the day

When it's springtime in the Rockies

In the Rockies far away

In most of the United States, spring is a warm and pleasant season. But this is not the case in the northwestern state of Alaska. According to Johnny Cash, it can be extremely cold.

I mushed from Point Barrow through a blizzard of snow

Been out prospectin' for two years or so

Pulled into Fairbanks, the city was a-boom

So I took a little stroll to the Red Dog Sea-loon

When I walked in the door, the music was clear

Purtiest voice I had heard in two years

The song she was singin' would make a man's blood run cold

When it's Springtime in Alaska, it's forty below…

[From Frank Loesser’s “Where’s Charley?”]

‘Twas a bright blue sky, and the lark sang high

On a bough that was blossom laden

And I had my eye on a very pretty maiden…

“In the Spring,” Alfred Lord Tennyson wrote, “a young man's fancy lightly turnsto thoughts of love." To that, I would simply add, you don’t have to be a youngman…

We heard a sad song about spring by Frank Loesser earlier in the program. But Loesser captured a joyful side of spring – and romance – when two loversmeet after many years…He wrote “Lovelier Than Ever” for his musical“Where’s Charley.” We’ll conclude our “This Is America” Songs of Springprogram with Jerry Desmonde and Marion Grimaldi.

Springtime, you’re looking lovelier than ever

Lovelier than ever before

Still irresistible in the same old gown of green

Still irresistible as that lilac-scented scene

When I was seventeen.

Springtime, you haven’t changed your way of whisp’ring

Whisp’ring that romance lies in store

Springtime, you’re being devastatingly clever

And lovelier than ever before…

This Is America is a production of VOA Learning English. Steve Ember here.Hope you enjoyed the music. We’ll see you next week.

Springtime, you’re being devastatingly clever

And lovelier than ever before.