Vincent – answers

Vincent – answers

Starry, starry night.
Paint your palette blue and grey ¹,
Look out on a summer’s day ²,

Did you get the preposition ‘on‘ correct? What about the apostrophe?

With eyes that know the darkness in my soul ³.

Did you spell ‘soul‘ correctly? The other spelling – sole – means a sort of fish, or the adjective ‘only’.

Shadows on the hills,
Sketch ⁴ the trees and the daffodils ⁵,
Catch the breeze ⁶ and the winter chills ⁷,
In colours on the snowy linen land.

Did you spell daffodils with 2 ls and breeze with a ‘z‘?
chill – an unpleasant feeling of coldness
chilly – adj – 1) unpleasantly cold or 2) unfriendly
the chill factor is the term which expresses the perceived lowering of the air temperature caused by the wind

Now I understand what you tried to say to me,
How you suffered for your sanity ⁸,
How you tried to set them free ⁹.
They would not listen ¹⁰, they did not know how.
Perhaps they’ll listen now.

We use the preposition ‘from‘ if you suffer from persecution, a condition or illness. Eg He suffers from fragile mental health. She’s suffering from a heavy cold (or from a chill! – i.e. a feverish cold).
To suffer for your sanity – means to suffer because of, on account of, for the sake of. You will come across the use of for after suffer far less often than from.

Starry, starry night.
Flaming flowers ¹¹ that brightly blaze ¹²,
Swirling ¹³ clouds in violet haze ¹⁴,
Reflect in Vincent’s ¹⁵ eyes of china blue.
Colours changing hue ¹⁶, morning fields of amber grain,
Weathered faces ¹⁷ lined in pain,
Are soothed ¹⁸ beneath the artist’s loving hand.

Flaming flowers – flowers do not normally flame! The song is using some poetic licence here, suggesting the bright colours of van Gogh’s flowers!
brightly blaze – the correct word order should be blaze brightly – but for the sake of the poem the adverb is placed before the verb. In both this instance and that above, you needed to sense the meaning and abandon usual word order.l
Vincent’s – did you get the apostrophe of possession?

Now I understand what you tried to say to me,
and how you suffered for your sanity,
And how you tried to set them free.
They would not listen, they did not know how.
Perhaps they’ll ¹⁹ listen now.

Did you remember the apostrophe showing the omitted letters ‘wi‘ ?

For they could not love you,
But still ²⁰ your love was true,
And when no hope ²¹ was left in sight
On ²² that starry, starry night,

Did you get the preposition ‘on‘, not ‘in’?

You took your life ²³, as lovers often do.
But I could have told you, Vincent,
This world was never meant ²⁴ for one
As beautiful as you.

Starry, starry night.
Portraits ²⁵ hung in empty halls,
Frameless heads on nameless walls,
With eyes that ²⁶ watch the world and can’t forget.

You remember that ‘that’ can replace the subject and object pronouns ‘who’ and ‘which’?

Like the strangers that you’ve met ²⁷,
The ragged men in ragged clothes ²⁸,
The silver thorn of bloody rose,
Lie crushed ²⁹ and broken ³⁰ on the virgin snow.

Now I think I know what you tried to say to me,
How you suffered for your sanity,
How you tried to set them free.
They would not listen, they’re not listening still.
Perhaps they never will…

To check the meaning of some of the words you heard in the song, click here, for a quiz!

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