The Sondheim Lyrics Chain

[scenicdesign71]

...And how you're always turning back too late
From the grass or the stick or the dog or the light;
How the kind of woman willing to wait's
Not the kind that you want to find waiting
To return you to the night,
Dizzy from the height...
Coming from the hat.

[KathyB]

I feel dizzy,
I feel sunny,
I feel fizzy and funny and fine,
And so pretty,
Miss America can just resign.


I know there's another lyric with "funny and fine" but I am positive we've used that lyric in this game, so I thought I'd go for something that might yield a different lyric.

[scenicdesign71]

Czolgosz, working man
Born in the middle of Michigan,
Woke with a thought, and away he ran
To the Pan-American Exposition
In Buffalo.

[KathyB]

So you should support the competition,
Try to set aside your own ambition,
Even while you jockey for position.
If you feel a sense of coalition,
Then you never really stand alone.

[scenicdesign71]

Love is just sand.  You can feel it shifting:
Soon as you stand, you begin to sink.
Everything's planned, then it gets to drifting --
Never to where you think.

[KathyB]

What do you think?
Who can it be?
Even the ink--
No here, let me...
"Your presence--"
Just think of it, Petra!
"Is kindly--"
It's at a chateau!
"Requested--"
Etcet'ra, etcetera...

[scenicdesign71]

With a smile and a will
But with more thought,
I acquired a chateau
Extravagantly o-
Verstaffed.

Too many people muddle sex with mere desire,
And when emotion intervenes, the nets descend.
It should on no account perplex -- or worse, inspire!
It's but a pleasurable means to a measurable end.


It's been a while since I took a look at this song's sick rhyme-scheme.  It's typical that "pleasurable/measurable" is just a freebie layered onto (and, at four syllables, a flashy distraction from) the main rhyme structure: the metrically-relevant rhymes in that last line are actually the seemingly innocuous means (from intervenes) and end (from descend).  I'd almost call "pleasurable/measurable" mere embroidery, were it not for the deliciously precise way SJS uses them to modify the idiom "a means to an end".  And that's not to mention the "comprehend/trend" that follows, or the whole preceding stanza -- "Where is style? Where is skill?" etc. -- that ties into "With a smile and a will" etc. -- or, for that matter, the other 80% of the song that I'm not even touching on here.

It's insane how he's able to build all this earthquake-proof rhyme architecture on the foundation of Leonora's idiosyncratic (but totally character-specific) diction and formidable intelligence: its apotheosis, "raisins/liaisons", may elicit a groan from some, but its laugh-out-loud inevitability is built not on SJS reaching for a rhyme but on Leonora finding exactly the right word to express her disdain -- even if it ultimately means compromising her French to do so (which is not, one feels, a minor consideration for her; one could even imagine her deliberately flattening liaisons, in this one instance, as a sardonic swipe at these classless young dilettantes who probably don't even have any French).  In any case, the whole sequence has been reverse-engineered so securely that the sketchy pronunciation, by the time it arrives, has already been more than earned by the acidulous perfection that is "No, not even figs... raisins" -- just as a statement, irrespective of rhyme -- and the drolly ineluctable logic by which it arose.

[Leighton]

Ther are rights and wrongs
And in-betweens
No one waits
When fortune intervenes.
And maybe they're really magic,
Who knows?

[KathyB]

Wait a minute,
Magic beans for a cow so old
That you had to tell a lie to sell it,
Which you told!
Were they worthless beans?
Were they oversold?
Oh, and tell us who persuaded you
To steal that gold!


I was trying to find another instance of the word and was surprised not to find it in A Little Night Music. I did find out that Solange Lafitte has a cologne called Magic that she's trying to introduce to the world in Follies.

[scenicdesign71]

Gold!
Grab the opportunity...
Gold!
Two musketeers...
Gold!
Part of a community
Of pioneers!

[KathyB]

One thing I remember from seeing Bounce was how often SJS used the word "pioneer" in the score. (The Pioneers were also my college mascot.)

I'm sure there's another one out there that's not in Bounce/Wise Guys/Road Show, but this is the one that keeps getting stuck in my mind.

Come and see
The new frontier!
Come and be
A pioneer!
You'll agree,
Tomorrow's here
Today!
Boca Raton!


(It's a little hard to tell, but you'll agree is the next phrase.)

[scenicdesign71]

This is what beauty can be,
Beauty celestial -- the best, you'll agree.
All for you,
These beautiful girls!


(Same deal here: all for you is the target).

[KathyB]

I'm all for you, whatever happens,
My dreams are yours to share.
Sometimes, it's true, my words are bitter,
But that's because I care.
If I get mad when I think you're wrong,
Maybe I am wrong, too.
But good or bad, everything I do
Is all for love of you.

[scenicdesign71]

There is a flower
Which offers nectar at the top,
Delicious nectar at the top,
And bitter poison underneath.
The butterfly who stays too long
And drinks too deep
Is doomed to die...
I read to fly; to skim.
I do not read to swim.

[KathyB]

I must think calm, comforting things:
Butterfly wings,
Emerald rings,
Or a murmuring brook,
Murmuring, murmuring, murmuring...
Look:
I'm calm, I'm calm,
I haven't a qualm,
I'm utterly under control.