Lines That Break Your Heart

Subject: Lines That Break Your Heart
From: Ebbie
Date: 19 Aug 13 - 11:46 AM

There's a beautiful thread going that asks for songs that sing to your heart. Made me think of songs and individual lines that make you grieve.

One line is from 'Sides of the Road' (at the moment not sure of the title, but sung by the Williamson Brothers. I think.):

"I thought there would be a place or a time
When someone or something would last."

Subject: RE: Lines That Break Your Heart
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 19 Aug 13 - 06:48 PM

Down from their green farmlands and from their loved ones
Marched husbands and brothers and fathers and sons.

From Dancing at Whitsun

Subject: RE: Lines That Break Your Heart
From: GUEST,Angeline
Date: 19 Aug 13 - 06:52 PM

From 'Morley Main':

"I don't suppose at 29 I'll find another man
The younger widows they'll be looking too"

Subject: RE: Lines That Break Your Heart
From: Charmion
Date: 19 Aug 13 - 06:55 PM

"I ain't sayin' you treated me unkind --
You could have done better, but I don't mind --
You just sort of wasted my precious time,
But don't think twice; it's all right."

The epitaph of my first marriage.

Subject: RE: Lines That Break Your Heart
From: Sandy Mc Lean
Date: 19 Aug 13 - 07:09 PM

The silence of a falling star
Lights up the purple sky
And as I wonder where you are
I'm so lonesome I could cry

For a heart wrenching tear-jerker Ol' Hank was king!

Subject: RE: Lines That Break Your Heart
From: Ebbie
Date: 19 Aug 13 - 07:15 PM

There are some great lines out there!

Subject: RE: Lines That Break Your Heart
From: kendall
Date: 19 Aug 13 - 07:54 PM

and, willy McBride it all happened again, and again and again and again and again.

Then someone found him dead one day beneath a table in a pub, with a collar and a chain clutched in his hand.
He never knew that his dog was impounded while he was dead drunk.

Subject: RE: Lines That Break Your Heart
From: Ebbie
Date: 19 Aug 13 - 08:09 PM

Wow.

Subject: RE: Lines That Break Your Heart
From: Bert
Date: 19 Aug 13 - 08:40 PM

Then she cried "Oh no" and sank into the snow, from cold and want her little one had died.

From "While London Sleeps"

Subject: RE: Lines That Break Your Heart
From: Joe_F
Date: 19 Aug 13 - 09:17 PM

And no locks on the doors. -- Rogers, "Sailors Rest"
The cutty stool and cradle O. -- "The Reel of Stumpie"
And children at their mothers' knees are pulling at the weeds -- "We Are Coming, Father Abraham"
She makes a small hole in the frost on the window -- Kaldor, "Bird on a Wing"
Que je me souviens d'eux -- Gerin-LaJoie, "Un Canadien Errant"
Walking in his footsteps in the sweet Delta dawn -- McDill, "Catfish John"
And pass as light by him as he can by me -- "The Cuckoo"
First flower of their wilderness, star of their night -- Gilman, "Fair Harvard"
I'd walk on down that silver lane -- Tawney, "Grey Funnel Line"
In the dead of winter, if springtime never comes -- Ellis, "Hot Buttered Rum"
We scarce break our fast ere we think how we dine -- "The Housewife's Lament"
Since love is lord of heaven and earth -- "How Can I Keep from Singing"
Tie my bones to his back, turn our faces to the west -- I Ride an Old Paint
When I could have turned to watch you instead -- Malvina Reynolds, "I Wish You Were Here"
I wisht Josiah an' me was back, a-workin' hard an' all. -- Winslow, "In Sugaring Time"
Sometimes I take a great notion -- Leadbelly, "Irene, Good Night"
Schon rief der Posten, Sie blasen Zapfenstreich -- Leip, "Lili Marleen"
Tonight there'll be but three -- "Mary Hamilton"
He was born on land, but he sure enjoys the skies -- von Schmidt, "My Love Come Rolling Down
Non, je ne regrette rien. -- Vaucaire, do.
While my hands are steady, while my eyes are good -- Cody, "The Old Figurehead Carver"
I'm tired of living and scared of dying -- Hammerstein, "Old Man River"
Goodnight, and joy be with you all -- "The Parting Glass"
Your face will shine through all our tears -- Seeger, "Precious Friend"
A dragon lives forever, but not so little boys -- Yarrow & Lipton, "Puff, the Magic Dragon"
Daddy, come quick! A big kitty, que gatito grande! -- Hammond, "San Carlos"
Married girl, married girl, she rocks the cradle and cries. -- Carter, "Single Girl, Married Girl"
This morning, this evening, so soon. -- "Tell Old Bill"
While my woman hollers like my mammy did. -- "Tennessee"
There were masts and yards and broken spars -- Delf, "Threescore and Ten"
Raise your glass to the pleasures that pass -- Raskin, "Time, Gentlemen, Time"
Let the 2:19 ease my troubled mind. -- Jones, "Trouble in Mind"
I'm going there to meet my mother -- "Wayfaring Stranger"
Oh, when will we ever learn -- Seeger, "Where Have All the Flowers Gone"
And overside I heard him call my name. -- Rogers, "White Squall"

Subject: RE: Lines That Break Your Heart
From: Phil Cooper
Date: 19 Aug 13 - 11:06 PM

A line from Kate and the Ghost of Lost Love by Dave Carter:

I climbed the redwood tree and caught the wren in flight,
but her wings were soft as morning and the morning slipped away.

Subject: RE: Lines That Break Your Heart
From: michaelr
Date: 20 Aug 13 - 12:36 AM

Forty years go by with someone laying in your bed
Forty years of things you wish you'd never said
How hard would it have been to say some kinder words instead

Patty Griffin, "Long Ride Home"

Subject: RE: Lines That Break Your Heart
From: Ebbie
Date: 20 Aug 13 - 01:42 AM

As I lie in my bed in the morning without you.
Every song in my breast dies a-borning. Without you.

'Last Thing on My Mind'

Subject: RE: Lines That Break Your Heart
From: Abdul The Bul Bul
Date: 20 Aug 13 - 02:14 AM

"If I could just take hold of her wildness now, If I could hold her in my arms today.....I wouldn't want her any other way". Oops, welling up again.
Al

Subject: RE: Lines That Break Your Heart
From: GUEST,Dot Callery
Date: 20 Aug 13 - 06:30 AM

'Autumn leaves they jewel the ground
They know the art of dying
They leave behind their sad cold hearts
In the scarlet shadows flying

For Rulers like to lay down laws
And rebels like to break them
And poor priests like to walk in chains
And god likes to forsake them'

'October Song' by the Incredible String Band

Subject: RE: Lines That Break Your Heart
From: GUEST,Mark Bluemel
Date: 20 Aug 13 - 06:34 AM

"For the Lord's cross might redeem us,
but our own just waste our time"

Bob Franke : Hard Love

The way June Tabor sings "just waste our time" ...

Subject: RE: Lines That Break Your Heart
From: kendall
Date: 20 Aug 13 - 06:50 AM

He'd come to town with his old wool hat pulled down,
Surrounded by the dogs that were his friends,
At times, too drunk to stand, he'd shake familiar hands,
And sit around the ESSO station 'til his loneliness would end.

And all through the night a faded yellow light,
Would burn inside the room where he would stand,
And play the old Victrola and drink his rusty wine,
And conduct the Mozart music with his hard and shaking hand. (Phil Brown by David Mallett)


Just a ragged old man, and his ragged old dog,
A ragged old life, in a ragged old world. (Utah Phillips)

Now I know I will not find you, you're gone from all but memory,
For I am told that one who loves you, has strewn your ashes on the sea. (Ashes on the sea, Utah Phillips.)

Utah told me that the first time he heard me sing his song, he had to pull over and weep. He was unable to see to drive. I will always treasure that memory.

Subject: RE: Lines That Break Your Heart
From: jacqui.c
Date: 20 Aug 13 - 09:12 AM

"And you wonder what Marion's found to do that's better than coming to see you,one more time."

Lonesome Robin - Bob Coltman.


"Husband sleep, lay your head back and dream......"

Miner's Lullabye - Utah Phillips

Subject: RE: Lines That Break Your Heart
From: Midchuck
Date: 20 Aug 13 - 09:33 AM

And where was the will of my father, when he raised his sword on high?
And where was my mother's wailing, when our flags were justified?

- Richard Farina

P.

Subject: RE: Lines That Break Your Heart
From: alex s
Date: 20 Aug 13 - 09:58 AM

You don't know what it's like to love somebody the way I love you

Subject: RE: Lines That Break Your Heart
From: kendall
Date: 20 Aug 13 - 11:56 AM

...and I feel like an oak tree that's caught in the wind, and my branches are too old to bend. (Dave Mallett)

Oh well, I'm saving a lot on eye drops reading this stuff.

Subject: RE: Lines That Break Your Heart
From: GUEST,HiLo
Date: 20 Aug 13 - 12:07 PM

Looking back over my shoulder I see
You happy without me.

Never Be Mine/ Kate Bush

Subject: RE: Lines That Break Your Heart
From: kendall
Date: 20 Aug 13 - 01:32 PM

I walk out alone and look at the sky,
Too empty to sing, too lonesome to cry. (Rock salt and nails, Utah Phillips.

God, how I miss that guy. Well, at least I had him as a dear friend for 30 years.

Subject: RE: Lines That Break Your Heart
From: PHJim
Date: 20 Aug 13 - 10:02 PM

Sang this at my brother's memorial service:

I feel like missing you today,
Sometimes I just get that way.
Seems like anything I see
Brings back another memory.
I feel like missing you today.
...
I feel like missing you today,
And letting nobody stand in my way.
I'm gonna pull down the shades
And play some old songs.

                               Todd Snider

And the day my Dad was buried:

Nights are long since you went away,
I think of you each hour of the day,
My Buddy, My Buddy,
Your buddy misses you.

Sorry, I forget who wrote this one.

Subject: RE: Lines That Break Your Heart
From: Phil Cooper
Date: 20 Aug 13 - 11:20 PM

Another Dave Carter line:

Sticks and stones might break this body and words might wound my soul,
but phantom visions fly where the faithful fear to go.

from Mother I Climbed.

Subject: RE: Lines That Break Your Heart
From: Phil Cooper
Date: 20 Aug 13 - 11:21 PM

Should read Phantom visions fly me where the faithful fear to go.

Sorry for the omission.

Subject: RE: Lines That Break Your Heart
From: Larry The Radio Guy
Date: 21 Aug 13 - 02:26 AM

"She slipped into the silience of my dreams last night
Wandering from room to room, she's turning on each light".

-Sweet Memories (Mickey Newbury)

Subject: RE: Lines That Break Your Heart
From: Ebbie
Date: 21 Aug 13 - 02:55 AM

Today I went to visit an acquaintance in the nursing home. He and I have been friendly for 20 years although never actual friends. In fact, I'm not sure that he knows my name. But he is a funny man and we laughed a lot whenever we met, sometimes at events but usually on the sidewalks of this town.

He has always been a mini man, a small bundle of energy and wit, a schoolteacher who taught algebra and geometry, a teacher who is still friends with students he taught 30 years ago.

Today he is bedfast and he has shrunk into himself, so much so that at first I thought I must have entered the wrong room, but then I saw his mouth and knew my friend.

His mind is clear even though his eyes are shut and he keeps up with the conversation around him. I recounted several stories that he had told me over the years and he laughed along with the others in the room.

Then some more people came in the room and I told him I was leaving. He held my hand and said, Don't go yet. Oh, don't go yet.

Subject: RE: Lines That Break Your Heart
From: Don(Wyziwyg)T
Date: 21 Aug 13 - 06:27 AM

'Cause here I am, where I'm always cold,
So cold and all alone,
And I'm doomed to walk this darkness
Till my soul goes sailing home

from "The Black Woman" by Dave Gibb

I'm learning the song, but can't yet get past that refrain unchoked.

Don T.

Subject: RE: Lines That Break Your Heart
From: GUEST,Fyldeplayer
Date: 21 Aug 13 - 09:02 AM

From Crossing the Bar which we have recently been doing as three part vocal, sadly appropriate today on news of fellow singers illness.

For though from out our bourn of Time and Place
The flood may bear me far,
I hope to see my Pilot face to face
When I have crost the bar.

Alfred Lord Tennyson

Subject: RE: Lines That Break Your Heart
From: GUEST,Bizibod
Date: 21 Aug 13 - 09:23 AM

Oh man and wife we used to be,
Now he's like a child upon my knee,
And in my arms I help my young man through the day

Kate Rusby- My Young Man

Subject: RE: Lines That Break Your Heart
From: Ebbie
Date: 21 Aug 13 - 11:01 AM

Oh, Bizibod, that's - oh, my.

Subject: RE: Lines That Break Your Heart
From: Bizibod
Date: 21 Aug 13 - 11:40 AM

I know.......
I can't even read it , let alone sing it, without totally dissolving.
Every time.
She wrote the song about the her grandparents, from her grandmother's perspective.
Beautiful.

Subject: RE: Lines That Break Your Heart
From: GUEST,Erich
Date: 21 Aug 13 - 01:37 PM

It's not how much your share is
but how much you can share

Si Kahn: What you do with what you've got

Subject: RE: Lines That Break Your Heart
From: alex s
Date: 21 Aug 13 - 02:12 PM

Time heals wounds they say, time takes the pain away;
I don't know why that never happened to me.
It's years since you went away, I miss you night and day.
Why you had to go is a mystery to me.

Subject: RE: Lines That Break Your Heart
From: GUEST,DTM
Date: 21 Aug 13 - 02:37 PM

"Ah've missed the boys, ah've missed the noise
Ah've missed the collier's way
Ah've never missed the black black coal
Ah dug day efter day"

(chorus of the "Colliers Way" by Davy Steele)

Subject: RE: Lines That Break Your Heart
From: GUEST,kendall
Date: 21 Aug 13 - 08:12 PM

His old dog died; he just up and died. That was 20 years ago, and he still grieves. (Mr. Bojangles)

Subject: RE: Lines That Break Your Heart
From: Elmore
Date: 21 Aug 13 - 08:23 PM

Well my friends are gone, My hair is grey, I ache in the places where I used to play. (Tower of Song)

Subject: RE: Lines That Break Your Heart
From: GUEST,Tinker from Chicago
Date: 21 Aug 13 - 09:30 PM

She's standing by the train station, panhandling for change.
Four more dollars buys a decent meal and a room.
Looks like the Sally Ann [Salvation Army] place after all,
a crowded sleeping hall that echoes like a tomb.
But it's warm and clean and free, and there are worse places to be:
at least it means no beating from her dad.
And if she cries because it's Christmas Day,
she hopes that it won't show.

(Stan Rogers, "First Christmas Away From Home")

Subject: RE: Lines That Break Your Heart
From: Bill D
Date: 21 Aug 13 - 09:33 PM

All of Bruce Phillips' "Enola Gay", but especially these:

"Look out, look out from your schoolroom window;
Look up, young children, from your play.
Your bright young eyes will turn to ashes
In the blinding light of Enola Gay.

I turn to see the fireball rising.
"My God, My God," all I can say.
I hear a voice within me crying,
"My mother's name was Enola Gay."

Subject: RE: Lines That Break Your Heart
From: Bill D
Date: 21 Aug 13 - 09:42 PM

Most of this song:


"I stood there one hour as patient as Job,
Calling to Pretty Polly, "Come open the door."
I saw another man enjoying of my room,
I walk-ed away by the light of the moon.

I took to my heels just as hard as I could go,
I rambled way down in the far shady grove,
And there I set down with a bottle in my hand,
Drinking of brandy and thinking of that man.

So earlye next morning Pretty Polly passed me by
With her red rosy cheeks and her black sparkling eyes;
Her eyes they were so black and her hair were of the same,
I'm wounded in my heart: did you ever feel that pain?

I wish I were a fisherman on yon riverside,
Pretty Polly my object come floating down the tide;
I'd throw my net around her, and bring her to the shore,
And have Pretty Polly to weep for no more."


But the song ends with this...one of my favorite lines:

"Green grows the laurel and so does the rue,
   Sugar is sweet, but not like you;
   And since it is no better, I'm glad it is no worse,
   Brandy in my bottle and money in my purse."

Subject: RE: Lines That Break Your Heart
From: GUEST,Allen in Oz
Date: 21 Aug 13 - 10:37 PM

" I'd trade all my tomorrows
For a single yesterday"


and

   " To make a long story short
    She's gone"

AD

Subject: RE: Lines That Break Your Heart
From: GUEST
Date: 22 Aug 13 - 02:04 AM

When you are old and tired and gray
Wear your overcoat on sunny days
When your brave tales have all been told
I'll ask for them when you are old
[ Lyrics from: http://www.cloverlyrics.com/e75123-gretchen_peters~when_you_are_old_lyrics.html ]
When you are old and full of sleep
And death no longer makes you weep
When your body aches with cold
I'll warm your heart when you are old

You'll still be the same to me
A comfort and a mystery
And I will be able to see
I'll need someone to comfort me

When you are old and pale and gone
A gentle hand is all you want
I will give you mine to hold
And I'll be here when you are old
Yes I will give you mine to hold
And I'll be here when you are old

Gretchen Peters or Butler Yeats

Subject: RE: Lines That Break Your Heart
From: GUEST,Shiloh Town. (By Tim Harden)
Date: 22 Aug 13 - 08:54 AM

See that woman stand apart, broken dreams broken heart,
Though she knows he played his part he wont be coming home.


This is the final verse I wrote to Tim's song, I'm sure he would have found it fitting.

Evan Johnson

Subject: RE: Lines That Break Your Heart
From: GUEST,kendall
Date: 22 Aug 13 - 12:11 PM

Dreaming in the night, I saw a land where no man had to fight,
Sheltered by your warmth, to me it seemed to be so right. (Song for Ireland)

Subject: RE: Lines That Break Your Heart
From: Joe Offer
Date: 22 Aug 13 - 02:43 PM

He was found in the wreck with his hand on the throttle
And scalded to death by the steam.

-The Wreck of the Old 97-

---

...and another railroad song:

My father was a railroad man
Killed a mile and a half from town.
His head was found 'neath the driver's wheel.
His body has never been found.

-In the Pines-

Subject: RE: Lines That Break Your Heart
From: Midchuck
Date: 22 Aug 13 - 03:31 PM

And the children from the city come up, looking for the good life
Of the picture-card New England of a long forgotten day.
God, I know the dream they're looking for.
Believe me, no one loved it more,
Than he who held it in his hands and watched it fade away.

- Dick McCormack, "Voices in the Hills."

Subject: RE: Lines That Break Your Heart
From: Ebbie
Date: 22 Aug 13 - 04:15 PM

I don't know why I left so free
What I wanted to do, what I wanted to see
But I can sure remember where I come from

West Virginia, My Home/Hazel Dickens


For many long years I've rambled this country
With never a thought of when I'd return
But now I go home and find no one waiting
The price I have paid to live and to learn

Son, don't go astray, is what they both told me
Remember that love for God can be found
But now they're both gone, this letter just told me
For years they've been dead. The fields have turned brown.

Carter Stanley

Subject: RE: Lines That Break Your Heart
From: Bobert
Date: 22 Aug 13 - 04:26 PM

There's a line from an old Conway Twitty song I used to do way back then:

"This time I've hurt her more
than she loves me"...

Sniff...

B~

Subject: RE: Lines That Break Your Heart
From: MGM·Lion
Date: 22 Aug 13 - 04:47 PM

I think it a great shame that this poem by G R Sims has become a sort of standing joke. But try to forget all the parodies, burlesques, witty follow-ups to the first line, and so on; and read it with an open mind. And see if you finish up dry-eyed.

Go on. Try

~M~



http://www.workhouses.org.uk/lit/xmasday.shtml