All my music is in the first place a matter of feeling and instinct. Do not ask me why I have written thus and not otherwise. I can give only one answer to this: I wrote the way I felt.
Hanging from the beam,
Slowly swaying (such the law),
Gaunt the shadow on your green,
Shenandoah!
The cut is on the crown
(Lo, John Brown),
And the stabs shall heal no more.