Long ago I learned how to sleep (Sandburg, set by P. Glass, F. Koch) (The Lied and Art Song Texts Page: Texts and Translations to Lieder, mélodies, canzoni, and other classical vocal music)


Long ago I learned how to sleep,	
In an old apple orchard where the wind swept by 
counting its money and throwing it away,
In a wind-gaunt orchard where the limbs forked out 
and listened or never listened at all,
In a passel of trees where the branches 
trapped the wind into whistling, "Who, who are you?"
I slept with my head in an elbow on a summer afternoon 
and there I took a sleep lesson.
There I went away saying: I know why they sleep, 
I know how they trap the tricky winds.
Long ago I learned how to listen to the singing wind 
and how to forget and how to hear the deep whine,
Slapping and lapsing under the day blue and the night stars:
  Who, who are you?
  
Who can ever forget
listening to the wind go by
counting its money
and throwing it away?

Authorship

Carl Sandburg (1878-1967)

Smoke and Steel

Musical settings (art songs, Lieder, mélodies, (etc.), choral pieces, and other vocal works set to this text), listed by composer (not necessarily exhaustive)

Philip Glass (1937-)

Frederick Koch (1923-)

String Quartet

Date added to the website: 2007-07-07.

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