Musica Vitale and Friends. 20th Anniversary Season

Time, you can spend it, when you spend it then you're running out of

Time, you can save it but to save it is to take a little

Time, in a minute, when you're in it, can you feel the passing

Time is an illusion, there's confusion when they tell you now it's

Time to get older, time to work and time to waste and there's no

Time, three two one eleven thirty, two AM, then dinner

Time now to kill, I said I will and still it flies and flies, oh

Time...

I. THE ROAD NOT TAKEN Two roads diverged in a yellow wood, And sorry could not travel both And be one traveler, long I stood And looked down one as far as I could To where it bent in the undergrowth; Then took the other, as just as fair, And having perhaps the better claim, Because it was grassy and wanted wear; Though as for that the passing there Had worn them really about the same, And both that morning equally lay In leaves no step had trodden black. Oh, I kept the first for another day! Yet knowing how way leads on to way, I doubted if I should ever come back. I shall be telling this with a sigh Somewhere ages and ages hence: Two roads diverged in a wood, and I -- I took the one less traveled by, And that has made all the difference.

II. THE PASTURE I'm going out to clean the pasture spring; I'll only stop to rake the leaves away (And wait to watch the water clear, I may): I sha'n't be gone long. You come too. I'm going out to fetch the little calf That's standing by the mother. It's so young It totters when she licks it with her tongue. I sha'n't be gone long. You come too.

III. COME IN As I came to the edge of the woods, Thrush music, hark! Now it was dusk outside, Inside it was dark. Too dark in the woods for a bird By sleight of wing To better its perch for the night, Though it could still sing. The last of the light of the sun That had died in the west Still lived for one song more In a thrush's breast. Far in the pillared dark Thrush music went Almost like a call to come in To the dark and lament. But no, I was out for the stars: I would not come in. I meant not even if asked, And I hadn't been.

IV THE TELEPHONE "When I was just as far as I could walk From here to-day, There was an hour All still When leaning with my head against a flower I heard you talk. Dont say I didnt, for I heard you say - You spoke from that flower on the window sill - Do you remember what it was you said?" "First tell me what it was you thought you heard." "Having found the flower and driven a bee away, I leaned my head, And holding by the stalk, I listened and I thought I caught the word - What was it? Did you call me by my name? Or did you say- Someone said 'Come' - I heard it as I bowed." "I may have thought as much, but not aloud." "Well, so I came."

V. A GIRL'S GARDEN A neighbor of mine in the village Likes to tell how one spring When she was a girl on the farm, she did A childlike thing. One day she asked her father To give her a garden plot To plant and tend and reap herself, And he said, "Why not?" In casting about for a corner He thought of an idle bit Of walled-off ground where a shop had stood, And he said, "Just it." And he said, "That ought to make you An ideal one-girl farm, And give you a chance to put some strength On your slim-jim arm." It was not enough of a garden, Her father said, to plough; So she had to work it all by hand, But she don't mind now. She wheeled the dung in the wheelbarrow Along a stretch of road; But she always ran away and left Her not-nice load. And hid from anyone passing. And then she begged the seed. She says she thinks she planted one Of all things but weed. A hill each of potatoes, Radishes, lettuce, peas, Tomatoes, beets, beans, pumpkins, corn, And even fruit trees And yes, she has long mistrusted That a cider apple tree In bearing there to-day is hers, Or at least may be. Her crop was a miscellany When all was said and done, A little bit of everything, A great deal of none. Now when she sees in the village How village things go, Just when it seems to come in right, She says, "I know! It's as when I was a farmer--" Oh, never by way of advice! And she never sins by telling the tale To the same person twice.

VI. STOPPING BY WOODS ON A SNOWY EVENING Whose woods these are I think I know. His house is in the village though; He will not see me stopping here To [watch]i his woods fill up with snow. My little horse must think it queer To stop without a farm-house near Between the woods and frozen lake The darkest evening of the year. He gives his harness bells a shake To ask if there is some mistake. The only other sound's the sweep Of easy wind and downy flake. The woods are lovely, dark and deep, But I have promises to keep, And miles to go before I sleep, And miles to go before I sleep.

VII. CHOOSE SOMETHING LIKE A STAR O Star (the fairest one in sight), We grant your loftiness the right To some obscurity of cloud- It will not do to say of night, Since dark is what brings out your light. Some mystery becomes the proud. But to the wholly taciturn In your reserve is not allowed. Say something to us we can learn By heart and when alone repeat. Say something! And it says, 'I burn. But say with what degree of heat. Talk Fahrenheit, talk Centigrade. Use Language we can comprehend. Tell us what elements you blend. It gives us strangely little aid But does tell something in the end And steadfast as Keats' Eremite, Not even stooping from its sphere, It asks a little of us here. It asks of us a certain height, So when at times the mob is swayed To carry praise or blame too far, We may choose something like a star To stay our minds on and be staid.