The Way Out
A few weeks ago we spent some time studying ballads, their history and continued relevance, their formal and tonal properties. To understand a common mood established by a particular strain of lyrical ballad, we talked about Robert Burns’s chestnut “A Red, Red Rose.” You know this poem, even if you’ve never read it. Three of its four stanzas search for language to describe the speaker’s unspeakable love for his subject (“Til a’ the seas gang dry, my dear, / And the rocks melt wi’ the sun; / I will love thee still, my dear”). The wind changes in the fourth stanza, though, when it comes time for goodbyes:
And fare thee weel, my only luve,
And fare thee weel awhile!
And I will come again, my luve,
Though it were ten thousand mile.
There’s that familiar bittersweet scheme that ties “Red, Red Rose” to a thousand similarly inclined ballads: deep love, inevitable separation, vague promises of reconciliation. Behind it all, a hard-won hope: We’ll meet again someday.
Though I don’t have the same kind of romance as Burns in mind, I’m in a bit of this ballad mood myself this week as we pack our stuff and get ready to take leave of a place I’ve come to love and a semester that has slipped away all-too-quickly. And I suspect we’re all in the process—a little painful at times—of converting the experiences of the past few months into memories, the domain of photographs, sketches, and fuzzy mental images; dreams, poems. Ballads.
Living in London and working with these students has been a serious privilege. However you’re connected to these folks—as family, friends, educators, whatever—you should be proud of them. They’ve been adventurers, making friends and chasing their interests in all directions; they’ve been resilient and resourceful; they’ve read hard books and expanded my understanding of them; they have, I’m confident, established a lifelong relationship with this part of the world. I’ll miss working with them. It’s all been better than I had any right to expect. We’ll meet again someday.
A big thanks, then, to these students and to anyone who has helped make it possible for them to be here. Thanks also to everyone else who has played a part in making our semester so special: Matt, Perrin, Erin, and everyone else at Accent; Professors Layton-Jones and Punter; Yogi and Rocky at AES; Wendy, Joanna, and all the staff at the Off-Campus Study Office. Love and gratitude, of course, to Katie, Hank, Louie, and Billie for diving in with me and learning to swim.
It’s not exactly the kind of ballad we discussed but this tune by Sandy Denny and Fairport Convention nails the feeling:
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
A pair of final photos:
there are tears in my eyes