Chorus:
Only a dream.
A distant view.
Only a wish
that never has come true
and lived for me.
Wishing for something that
I can never have
is nothing new.
Only a beat
within my heart.
A fairy tale
that never had a start.
A fantasy.
Love! I feel the magic growing
of your love but there's no knowing
Who she is or where she is
Because
she's just a gleam.
Just a hope that clings
and always brings
only a dream.
Well, the melody was beautiful anyway.
* * * *
There were others; I was grinding them out like sausages: SOMEONE I KNOW, ROLLIN' ALONG, ONLY YOU, UNDER A SPELL, THE LAMP I SEE FROM MY WINDOW, EVERYTHING ABOUT YOU, etc. Often not completed or not worth completing.
My next songwriting opportunity came in 1943, at Cornell University when I enlisted in the A.S.T.P. (Army Specialized Training Program.) Actually, I can't recall having spare time for song writing. At any rate I'm sure I couldn't have thought up a rhyme for our residence hall named Cascadilla.
Next came the Infantry (A.S.T.P. students tossed into it – not too happily.) World War Two limited my song writing opportunities. I did enter a contest (sponsored by the Army I assume) to write an Army oriented lyric for an already existing song. Mine was:
Forgotten first line
When you hear those 88's (German shell)
Dig without ado, digga-do, do, do.
Dig without ado, digga-do.
I didn't win – or place in that contest.
One more song militarily "inspired." This one written while I was on guard duty in England. (December 1944) Not too difficult to assess my frame of mind. I titled it LA VALSE DE MéMORIE. Ouch.
Verse:
Night's are long in the winter.
They're bleak with the cold and the dark.
The warmth of my youth
has departed.
The fingers of time
left their mark.
Chorus: (or as I wrote it: TRISTEMENT: ouch again.)
When I am alone
with the night
and the winds lonely moan.
The memories I've made
whisper by
in an endless parade.
I see days I've spent
and how little I've gained.
I see good I've meant
and how promises waned.
The ghosts of the past
flutter into my room
and the host of them last
as the stars and the moon.
But all night must pass
and the darkness must blend into day.
So winter through fall
These are things
that the past
sends my way.
Gone is my youth
like the leaves from the trees.
All I have left
are my memories.
A few weeks later, my Division (89th) ended up in Germany. More fun than my song. At least I got a novel out of it.
* * * *
Next came college – The University of Missouri, (1946) – after several years of post-Army employment. I went to Missouri because 1. They had a well-regarded Journalism School and 2. It was the only college that would accept me with no language credit. The high school I attended – God knows why – Brooklyn Technical High School – didn't require a language. I could have, I suppose, enrolled in a technical college, like M.I.T. or CalTech but I didn't want to. I was immersed in creative aspiration by then and opted to 1. Write stories. 2. Write songs – too. I think I wrote more songs in that period (1946-1949) than I ever did before – or since for that matter.
My initial venture was for a J. School Musical – IN KING ARTHUR – written and (I believe) directed by an upper classman named Don MacKay. (Sp. could be off.) I wrote several songs for that show. Its leading man was a student named Stanley Nierstedt. (Later, turning professional, he became Stanley Grover. I think Grover was his middle name.) For him, I wrote:
