GUEST, "Northern Sky" still breaks my heart, especially those lines - most of all that awful last line. The first four lines express naked longing with a really childlike plainness, but as soon as he's gestured towards actually reaching out to someone he has to cover it up with a bit of misty Arthurian imagery. Oh, if you would and you could... then give the poor lad a ring!

This is the sense in which I think Nick Drake's emotional world, as expressed in his songs, was self-centred & self-enclosed (far more so than John Clare, incidentally, who was a terrific observer of nature). So much of what he wrote was about loneliness, rejection and isolation, or else about an ideal love which never quite stays in focus. "Fly" is another example - "Come ride in my merry car by the bay", for goodness' sake. Wonderful song, and the emotions at the heart of it seem very real; they just don't seem to involve any other human being.