Overhauling the song

As I continue to look at my song I Dream'd in a Dream something does not seem right to me.  I like the motivic development of the accompaniment and the general outline of the vocal setting.  The aspect I realized that I do not like is the flow of the vocal melody.  The overall shape and contours of the sub-phrases are fine.  There is too much space between these sub-phrases that interrupt the continuity of the vocal setting.

My first approach to fix this issue was to tighten up the melody and delete some of the superfluous measures.  I worked on that a little bit, but I found that in the context of the accompaniment there are not many "extra" measures.  Then I thought of the idea of changing the time signature from 5/4 to 4/4.  This ended up being an easy change as many of the measures ended with half notes.  So, in essence, there were superfluous beats in almost every measure.

This change seems to work for the best.  I did need to drop three measures to tighten up the space between the lines of text.  Also, I have had to change some, but not many, pitches to fit better with the accompaniment.  Since I am not a great piano player, I will need to enter these changes into Finale and listen to the playback to hear for sure if this is the best solution.