OF ALL THE THINGS I LOVE I love to see the sun come smiling to the world I love to hear the wind go singing through a field I love to hear a love-bird singing in a tree, And I love to see a lovely face light up with love for me. CHORUS Of all the things I love, 1 love the most Sleeping in the shade of love. Sleeping in the shade of love, I love the most, my love. Of all the things I love to taste, Sweetest is the kiss of love. Dreaming in the shade of love, The kiss of love I love the most, my love. My love, of all the lovely things, Loveliest of all is you, Dreaming in the shade of love. Sleeping in the shade of love, my love, I love the most, my love. I love to breathe the scent of earth and new-mown hay I love to taste the peach and berry ripe in May I love to feel the spray as I walk beside the sea, And I love to see a lovely face light up with love for me. vii THE YEARS The years, the years, they come and go, And go and go, and oh, my heart The years have gone with my heart. The days, the days still come and go, And I still breathe, But oh, my heart The years have gone with my heart The years, the days, the nights Still come and go, And I still dream, But oh, my heart is gone, My heart is gone with the years. The hours, the hours, the long, dreaming hours Still come and go, And I still dream. But the light is gone from my dream, And the love is gone from my heart The two foregoing songs have been published by Chappell Music by Paul Bowles, words by William Saroyan. PREFACE Loves Old Sweet Song in addition to being a theatrical entertainment, intended primarily to delight the eye and ear and the heart and mind of the beholder, is literally a song. The singers of the song are the fewpeople in the play selected from the many in the world, but any who see the play are likely to be the singers of the song also, inasmuch as the song is living itself. It is an old song, but the time is our time, the people are our people, and the environment is our environment. All the sources of the song are contemporary, but still the song is the oldest song in the world, as love is the most basic emotion of life. There could be no mor tality without love, and no dimension to living without song. Love is an inevitable part of the bargain of the living in the inexplicable exchange of nothingness for mortality, and poetry is mans defense against being swindled in that bargain. Any man who is an alien to poetry, no matter who he is, is swindled in that bargain...
