Hunter reciting poetry (not his own)

Lyrics: Various
Music: None

This is a passage from Robert Hunter's performance at the House of Blues on 28 April 2002.

[Hunter]
"I don't just know the songs you think I know. I know other songs. I know all the Tom Lehrer songs. You want Tom Lehrer?"

One man took the credit and one man took the blame
Nicolai Ivanovich Lobachevsky is his name
I'll never forget the time the great Lobachevsky
is teach me the secret of success
in mathematics, plagiarize
Let no one else's work evade your eyes
Plagiarize, , plagiarize, , plagiarize
Only be sure always to call it please "research".

[from "Lobachevsky" by Tom Lehrer]

"Or those things I learned in Sunday school:"

The Lord made me, I'm happy as can be
My heart is full and running over
Running over, running over

"I think the first thing I ever did on stage, fourth grade:"

I would be a sunbeam, shining for the King
Shining, shining, while His praises sing

"And next year I got to do:"

I shot an arrow into the air
It fell to earth I know not where
For, so swiftly it flew, the sight
Could not follow it in its flight
For who has eyes so keen and strong
That they can follow the flight of song
Long, long afterward, in an oak
I found the arrow, still unbroke
And the song, from beginning to end
I found again in the heart of a friend

[from The Arrow And The Song]

"Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. The same as gave you:"

By the shores of Gitche Gumee
By the shining Big-Sea-Water
Stood the wigwam of Nokomis
Daughter of the Moon, Nokomis
Hiawatha

[from The Song Of Hiawatha]

"And the same as gave you:"

Listen my children and you shall hear
Of the midnight ride of Paul Revere
On the eighteenth of April, in Seventy-Five
Hardly a man is now alive
Who remembers that famous day and year
He said to his friend, "If the British march
By land or sea from the town tonight
Hang a lantern aloft in the belfry arch
Of the old North Church, as a signal light
One if by land, and two if by sea
And I on the opposite shore will be
Ready to ride and spread the alarm
Through every Middlesex village and farm"

Then he said "Good night!" and with muffled oar
Silently rowed to the Charlestown shore
While the Somerset, British man-of-war
A phantom ship, each mast and spar
And a huge black hulk, that was magnified
By its own reflection in the tide

[ from Paul Revere's Ride]

"My word, don't get me started"

riverrun, past Eve and Adam's, from swerve of shore to bend of bay, brings us by a commodius vicus of recirculation back to Howth Castle and Environs.

Sir Tristram, violer d'amores, fr'over the short sea, had passencore rearrived from North Armorica on this side the scraggy isthmus of Europe Minor to wielderfight his penisolate war:

[nor had topsawyer's rocks by the stream Oconee exaggerated themselse to Laurens County's gorgios while they went doublin their mumper all the time: nor avoice from afire bellowsed mishe mishe to tauftauf thuartpeatrick not yet, though venissoon after, had a kidscad buttended a bland old isaac:]

not yet, though all's fair in vanessy, were sosie sesthers wroth with twone nathandjoe. Rot a peck of pa's malt had Jhem or Shen brewed by arclight and rory end to the regginbrow was to be seen ringsome on the aquaface.

The fall (bababadalgharaghtakamminarronnkonnbronntonner ronntuonnthunntrovarrhounawnskawntoohoohoordenenthurnuk!) of a once wallstrait oldparr is retaled early in bed and later on life down through all christian minstrelsy.

[The great fall of the offwall entailed at such short notice the pftjschute of Finnegan, erse solid man,]

that the humptyhillhead of humself prumptly sends an unquiring one well to the west in quest of his tumptytumtoes:

And death shall have no dominion
Dead men naked they shall be one
With the man in the wind and the west wind
And death shall have no dominion

[From "And Death Shall Have No Dominion" by Dylan Thomas]

Oh, Death
Woah, Death
Won't you spare me over 'til another year

[From "Oh Death" - traditional]

Shoot, if you must, this old gray head
But spare my country's flag, she said

[From "Barbara Frietchie", by John Greenleaf Whittier]