Tonight we read a song as if it were a poem. It’s long, strange, almost improvised, and many critics think it’s one of the greatest recordings ever made.
Learn from Songs · Song as Poetry (C1–C2) · C1–C2
Cyprus Avenue
An advanced lesson on one of the most admired songs in rock music: a song as poetry. Inversion after adverbials of place and movement (Here comes…, Up the hill stands…), the historic present, the language of longing and memory, and the tools of literary analysis (imagery, repetition, stream of consciousness), with Philo, Sophia, Marcos and Demetria, Sappho, and the Song of Songs.
SOPHIA
PHILO
What is it about?
SOPHIA
A street. A real one, in Belfast. And a young man who can’t stop going back to it, in his mind and in his car.
DEMETRIA
Like Carolina in My Mind?
Before you listen: the song
Belfast and New York, 1968
Van Morrison grew up in a small terraced house on Hyndford Street, in working-class east Belfast. A short walk away was Cyprus Avenue: a wide, tree-lined street of large houses with gardens and driveways, where wealthy families lived. A childhood friend recalled that it was the street they all aspired to, on the other side of the tracks, and that they used it as a short cut.
In 1968, aged twenty-three and living in America, Morrison recorded Astral Weeks in New York in a few sessions. The musicians were jazz players, led by the double bassist Richard Davis; “Cyprus Avenue” adds flute, harpsichord and strings to a loose blues structure. The album sold poorly at first. Today it regularly appears near the top of lists of the greatest albums of all time.
The song is a memory of adolescence that unfolds like a dream. The narrator sits in a car on the avenue, unable to move, overwhelmed by feelings he cannot express. Images drift past: trees, a mansion on the hill, schoolchildren on their way home, falling leaves, a fairy-tale lady in a carriage. He is tongue-tied, trembling, afraid he may lose his mind. The street stands for everything he longs for and cannot reach: love, beauty, another life.
Morrison often closed his concerts with it in the 1970s. In 2015, for his seventieth birthday, he played two concerts on Cyprus Avenue itself.
The street you can see, but never quite reach.
Listen: a dream, not a story
PHILO
Listen once, without the text, all seven minutes. Don’t try to follow a plot: there isn’t one. What images stay with you? What is the mood?
SOPHIA
Then listen again. Notice the instruments: double bass, flute, harpsichord, strings. How do they create the feeling of memory? Answer Section A.
🌳 Listen to the song: “Cyprus Avenue” (Van Morrison, 1968), from the album “Astral Weeks”.Listen to the official recording →
📜 Read the words while you listen: “Cyprus Avenue”, Van Morrison.Read the lyrics →
Inversion after adverbials of place
DEMETRIA
Here comes the bus. Up on the hill stands the mansion. Down the avenue came a carriage.
SOPHIA
In literary and spoken English, when a sentence begins with an adverbial of place or movement (here, there, up the hill, down the road, into the room), the verb can come before the subject: Into the room walked a stranger. It works with verbs of position and movement (come, go, stand, lie, sit, walk). But not with pronouns: Here she comes (not Here comes she). The old word yonder (= over there) belongs to the same poetic register.
The historic present
MARCOS
Why is a memory told in the present tense?
SOPHIA
The historic present makes the past feel immediate, as if it were happening now: I’m sitting in the car, the leaves are falling… Writers, storytellers and comedians all use it. The listener is placed inside the memory.
The tools of literary analysis
PHILO
How do we talk about a song like a poem?
SOPHIA
Useful terms: imagery (pictures in words), repetition / anaphora (the same words again and again, like a spell), stream of consciousness (thoughts flowing without logical order), juxtaposition (placing contrasting things side by side: the poor boy and the rich avenue), motif (a recurring image: the trees, the car). And verbs for analysis: the song evokes, conveys, suggests, juxtaposes, captures.
The language of longing
DEMETRIA
How do you say you want something you can’t have?
SOPHIA
to long for / to yearn for / to pine for; to be smitten; tongue-tied (unable to speak because of strong emotion); unattainable; on the other side of the tracks (from a different social class); to be lost for words.
Sophia’s comparison: Sappho and the Song of Songs
SOPHIA
Six hundred years before us, the poet Sappho described what happens when she sees the person she loves: her tongue breaks, a thin fire runs under her skin, her eyes can see nothing, her ears hum. Two and a half thousand years later, a young man in Belfast describes exactly the same thing.
PHILO
And the Song of Songs: the beloved searches the streets and the squares of the city by night for the one her soul loves, and cannot find him.
DEMETRIA
So the street of longing is very old.
MARCOS
And it has very good trees.
Sophia’s summary
| Words and forms | Use | Example |
|---|---|---|
| Here comes… / Up the hill stands… | inversion after adverbials of place and movement | Into the room walked a stranger. |
| Here she comes (pronoun: no inversion) | the exception | There he goes. |
| historic present | telling a memory as if it were happening now | I’m sitting in the car and the leaves are falling. |
| imagery, repetition, juxtaposition, motif | literary analysis | The song juxtaposes poverty and wealth. |
| long for, yearn, tongue-tied, unattainable | the language of longing | He is tongue-tied whenever she passes. |
Practice
Listen to the song for Section A, then do the rest. Press “Check my answers” at the end. You can try again as many times as you like.
A · Listen: the song
Listen to the song and choose the best answer.
1. What is Cyprus Avenue?
2. Where did Van Morrison grow up?
3. How is the song structured?
4. What does the avenue represent for the narrator?
5. Which instruments surround the voice?
6. How was the album received at first?
B · Grammar and vocabulary
Write the missing word or words.
7. Up on the hill the mansion. (stand, present)
8. Here the bus. (come)
9. Here she ! (come, with a pronoun)
10. He longs a different life.
11. Whenever she passes, he is completely tongue- .
12. The song the poverty of the narrator with the wealth of the avenue. (place side by side)
C · Right or wrong?
Is the sentence correct English?
13. “Here comes she now.”
14. “Into the room walked a tall stranger.”
15. “He yearns to a life he can never have.”
16. “The song evokes the atmosphere of a Belfast autumn.”
Talk and write
Discussion and writing
Close reading. Choose one image from the song (the trees, the car, the mansion, the schoolchildren, the lady in the carriage). In pairs, discuss what it might represent, and how the music supports it.
Discuss. 1. Is a song a poem? What does music add, or take away? 2. Why do we idealise places we cannot reach? 3. Compare “Cyprus Avenue” with “Carolina in My Mind”: two songs about a place remembered from far away.
Inversion practice. Describe a place you know well, beginning sentences with adverbials of place: At the end of the street stands…, Through the window comes…, Down by the river lies…
Write (250–300 words). A literary analysis. How does “Cyprus Avenue” convey longing? Discuss imagery, repetition, juxtaposition and the music, using the vocabulary of analysis (evokes, conveys, suggests). Include one comparison with Sappho or the Song of Songs.
Now try the writing task: your own literary analysis.Play the gamebook →