Chords for Sting - If On A Winter's Night

[Gm] _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _
_ _ _ [Cm] Winter is the season of the imagination, more than any other for me.
Landscapes are magically [F] transformed by snow.
I come from [Eb] War's End on Time, which is very industrial.
[Gm] The snow would make this [Cm] into a magical, magical place.
[Gm] The angel Gabriel from heaven came
[Cm] His wings as [Gm] drifted snow his eyes
So that magic [Eb] extends into everything about [F] Winter.
The stories, [A] the spookiness, the ghosts in the chimney, [Ab] the silence of the [G] snow.
All that stuff I wanted to bring to [F] this album.
My feeling of mystery [Gm] and storytelling.
[A] Oh, _ _ [D] _
_ _ _ _ _ _ [Cm] _ _
the snow it melts the sooner, sooner
The [Gm] winds begin [C] to say
This album happened [Fm] in an organic way.
It was a suggestion to do a Christmas record.
I said no, no, let's do something wider than that.
[G] Let's do a winter record.
[Cm] And when a woman tells _ [F] me
My face she'll soon [Cm] forget
There are some folk songs.
One particular [B] folk song from my hometown of Newcastle
called The [G] Snow It Melts The Soonest.
It reminds me [Abm] of the Northumberland [Eb] moors in the winter. _
[Cm] Starkly, bleakly beautiful.
Oh, the snow it melts [F] the soonest of all
[Cm] It's a dark time, it's a cold time.
It's also a time of warmth and family and love and tenderness.
And so all of those things are [Ab] ingredients in this kind of [Em] soup which we've created.
_ [C] _ [G] _ _ [Cm] _
[Gm] _ _ [C] _ [Em] _ _ _ _ _
[Gb] _ [G] I [D] was [Em] drawn to [E] songs that had an ambivalent [E] quality about them
because that's the way I feel about the winter and Christmas [Em] generally.
[C] Us child, let [G] your mommy [Em] sleep in
Till the night and to be right
What I found [C] is that there were a lot [A] of lullabies.
[G] And lullabies seem to [E] have a [Eb] dual purpose.
[E] One is to soothe the child.
And _ [Em] the _ other, paradoxically, is the opposite.
It's [G] to disturb [Eb] the child.
So you have these wonderful, lilting, rocking melodies to put you to sleep.
But the lyrics are generally about terror. _ _ _ _ _
_ Oh, my dear heart, young Jesus sleeps
[Ab] Weep [Eb] well, like weep [A] the little [Ab] [Eb] fool
_ [D] _ [A] _
_ [G] _ _ [A] _ _ I'm very much a winter person
and a lot of my songs [Em] relate to [D] that theme anyway.
It's just part of [E] the landscape, if you [G] like.
Mercury [A] falling, [G] I rise from [E] my bed
[A] I have to [E] hold my [D] head
[Em]
I've sort of figured out what my job is over the years
and my interest is kind of wide.
I like classical music, I like pop music, [A] I like jazz, and I like folk [Gb] music.
I try and [D] draw from those traditions and synthesize [Bm] something [Em] new.
I [C] still see her [Bm] face as beautiful [A] as day
It's easy [G] to remember
[Am] Remember [D] my love that [Em] way
[C] All I hear is [Bm] that lonesome, [A] lonesome [Am] sound
And the howls of [Em] winter
_ [G] _ _ _ _ Soul _ _ Cake is a song I've known since I was a kid.
I knew it was a begging song, but I didn't really know the derivation of the whole thing.
We did some research and we found out that it was actually pre-Christian.
A soul cake, a soul cake, these good missus a soul cake
They would make food for the souls of the dead in the Celtic festival of the dead,
what is now known as Halloween.
It's a very old festival.
And the soul cakes were there to appease the ghosts of the past.
Soul cake, a soul cake, these good missus a soul cake
An apple, a pear, a plum, or a [Gm] cherry
That's the derivation, and it's a very interesting one.
It kind of ties in with the whole record of treating with the spirits of the past, so that you can move forward.
Soul cake, a soul cake, these good missus a soul cake
You know, I would say if I have a spirituality at all, it's about music.
I [Cm] play and I listen to music [F] as if [Gm] it really matters to my [C] soul, to [F] my [Gm] eternal being. _ _
[C] _ [F] _ _ [Gm] _ _ _ [C] _ [F] _
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