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WaltsBand.com logo and legend

Featuring the songs of Nick Sullivan

Demos, discussion, lyrics, sheet music

Pledge

 
 

Album:  Songs Sung Sideways

9. Pledge

Although we don’t have the statistics right here, we are sure they would show that sincere pledges of undying romantic love outnumber ensuing lifelong attachments by a ratio of a lot. Nevertheless, there is something impressively dramatic about a vow that commits you without reserve until the end of time. And perhaps the statistics would even show that relationships that incorporate more than some threshold amount of pledging behavior also have longer median lifetimes then the others by a ratio of a fair bit.

"A fixed idea is like the iron rod which sculptors put in their statues. It impales and sustains."
Hippolyte Taine (1828-1893)

The Song

Walt: I used to scoff when I heard this song. I believed – heck, I knew – that nobody can count on having the same emotion in the distant future as they do in the present. But now I’m a convert. I feel completely the opposite.

All: As do we all.

Walt: Go ye now, and be at peace!

All: Huh?

The Music

The melody of Pledge covers a moderately wide range — a minor thirteenth, from F# to D — so it really lends itself to showing off your vocal chops. Unfortunately, not all singers have vocal chops, but we’re not allowed to say who we’re thinking about when we say that.

Lyrics and Chords

Verse 1

A+        D           A     A6     Bm           A

While the woods still stand on the outstretched land,

          D           D+          E9           A

While the water still runs in the roots of the tree

A+        D6   D    A        A6     Bm        A

While the free wind breathes in the trembling leaves

  D           A         D

I still shall cleave to thee.

 

        A              G                          D

Let the months and the years, and the salt of our tears

     G           D+          E9          A

Roll away as the river rolls down to the sea,

A+     D6    D    A    A6     Bm       A

As the stone does bide on the mountain-side,

   D       A         D

So I shall cleave to thee.

Verse 2

When all things have fallen, when nothing can rise,

When there’s none left to stare at the skies and the sea,

When the song of the sun and the moon is done

I still shall cleave to thee.

 

You might say that forever is too big a word,

But we’ll make it as true as it knows how to be,

When time loses track, when the sky goes black,

I still shall cleave to thee.

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