The Gallop

a meter that might need a name if more people used it

I was listening to this old song the other day:

“Don’t pull your love out on me, honey
Take my heart, my soul, my money
But don’t leave me here drownin’ in my tears”

--Hamilton, Joe Frank, & Reynolds, “Don’t Pull Your Love”

& realized it had much the same structure as Leonard Cohen’s “Stranger Song”:

It’s true that all the men you knew/ were dealers
who said they were through / with dealing
Every time you gave them shelter
I know that kind of man
It’s hard / to hold the hand of anyone
who is reaching for the sky just to surrender
who is reaching for the sky just to surrender.

And then sweeping up the jokers / that he left behind
you find he did not / leave you very much not even laughter
Like any dealer he was watching / for the card
that is so high and wild
he’ll never need to deal another
He was just some Joseph looking for a manger
He was just some Joseph looking for a manger.

And then leaning on your window sill
he’ll say one day you caused his will
to weaken with your love and warmth and shelter
And then taking from his wallet
an old schedule of trains, he’ll say
I told you when I came I was a stranger
I told you when I came I was a stranger.

But now another stranger seems
to want you to ignore his dreams
as though they were the burden of some other
O you’ve seen that man before
his golden arm dispatching cards
but now it’s rusted from the elbows to the finger
And he wants to trade the game he plays for shelter
Yes he wants to trade the game he knows for shelter.

Ah you hate to see another tired man
lay down his hand
like he was giving up the holy game of poker
And while he talks his dreams to sleep
you notice there’s a highway
that is curling up like smoke above his shoulder
It is curling just like smoke above his shoulder.

You tell him to come in sit down
but something makes you turn around
The door is open you can’t close your shelter
You try the handle of the road
It opens do not be afraid
It’s you my love, you who are the stranger
It’s you my love, you who are the stranger.

Well, I’ve been waiting, I was sure
we’d meet between the trains we’re waiting for
I think it’s time to board another
Please understand, I never had a secret chart
to get me to the heart of this
or any other matter
When he talks like this
you don’t know what he’s after
When he speaks like this,
you don’t know what he’s after.

Let’s meet tomorrow if you choose
upon the shore, beneath the bridge
that they are building on some endless river
Then he leaves the platform
for the sleeping car that’s warm
You realize, he’s only advertising one more shelter
And it comes to you, he never was a stranger
And you say ok the bridge or someplace later.

And then sweeping up the jokers that he left behind ...

And leaning on your window sill ...

I told you when I came I was a stranger.”

--In other words, two four-beat lines followed by a five-beat line. What is it that’s so propulsive about this meter? It bears within it the potential to function as a doubletime ballad: “Let’s meet tomorrow if you choose/ upon the shore, beneath the bridge/ that they are building on some endless river”. I’m sure there are plenty of other songwriters who’ve taken up this rhythm, & as I have said before, on occasion, in songwriting a good meter is worth ten melodies.

This is probably not the oldest version, but to me it is the best:

“THIS CORRUPTIBLE

The Body, long oppressed
And pierced, then prayed for rest,
(Being but apprenticed to the other Powers;)
And kneeling in that place
Implored the thrust of grace
Which makes the dust lie level with the flowers.

Then did that fellowship
Of three, the Body strip;
Beheld his wounds, and none among them mortal;
The Mind severe and cool;
The Heart still half a fool;
The fine-spun Soul, a beam of sun can startle.

These three, a thousand years
Had made adventurers
Amid all villainies the earth can offer,
Applied them to resolve
From the universal gulph
What pangs the poor material flesh may suffer.

‘This is a pretty pass;
To hear the growing grass
Complain; the clay cry out to be translated;
Will not this grosser, stuff
Receive reward enough
If stabled after labouring, and baited?’

Thus spoke the Mind in scorn:
The Heart, which had outworn
The Body, and was. weary of its fashion,
Preferring to be dressed
In skin of bird or beast,
Replied more softly, in a feigned compassion.

‘Anatomy most strange
Crying to chop and change;
Inferior copy of a higher image;
While I, the noble guest,
Sick of your second-best
Sigh for embroidered archangelic plumage:

For shame, thou fustian cloak!’
And then the Spirit spoke;
Within the void it swung securely tethered
By strings composed of cloud;
It spoke both low and loud
Above a storm no lesser star had weathered.

‘O lodging for the night!
O house of my delight!
O lovely hovel builded for my pleasure!
Dear tenement of clay
Endure another day
As coffin sweetly fitted to my measure.

‘Take Heart, and call to Mind
Although we are unkind;
Although we steal your shelter, strength, and clothing;
‘Tis you who shall escape
In some enchanting shape
Or be dissolved to elemental nothing.

‘You, the unlucky slave,
Are the lily on the grave;
The wave that runs above the bones a-whitening;
You are the new-mown grass;
And the wheaten bread of the Mass;
And the fabric of the rain, and the lightning.

‘If one of us elect
To leave the poor suspect
Imperfect bosom of the earth our parent;
And from the world avert
The Spirit or the Heart
Upon a further and essential errand;

‘His chain he cannot slough
Nor cast his substance off;
He bears himself upon his flying shoulder;
The Heart, infirm and dull;
The Mind, in any skull;
Are captive still, and wearier and colder.

‘ ‘Tis you who are the ghost,
Disintegrated, lost;
The burden shed; the dead who need not bear it;
O grain of God in power,
Endure another hour!
It is but for an hour,’ said the Spirit.”

--Elinor Wylie, from Angels and Earthly Creatures (1929)