Favourite Phrases in Songs

Subject: Favourite Phrases in Songs
From: GUEST,Rafflesbear
Date: 24 Sep 08 - 04:28 PM

Would you like to share with us some of your favourite phrases from songs - you know a couple of lines, a line or just half a line where the songwriter has just encapsulated a thought in a way that leaves you wishing you could write like that

Tiny pieces of poetry thrown in and almost lost in the song

here's a couple of examples to show what I mean and maybe get the ball rolling

Gordon Lightfoot's Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald
"does anyone know where the love of God goes when the waves turn the minutes to hours"

and from Rufford Park Poachers on the death of Roberts the head keeper
"He never will rise up until the final Judgment Day"

over to you, Mudcats

Subject: RE: Favourite Phrases in Songs
From: Desert Dancer
Date: 24 Sep 08 - 04:32 PM

Some previous contributions are here:
Favorite Lines thread -- not to discourage any new thoughts...

~ Becky in Tucson

Subject: RE: Favourite Phrases in Songs
From: GUEST,Rafflesbear
Date: 24 Sep 08 - 04:40 PM

Thanks for the link Becky - some ready-made answers there - but if you could look for the really short bits in this thread please

Subject: RE: Favourite Phrases in Songs
From: Snuffy
Date: 24 Sep 08 - 05:46 PM

She made her way homewards, with one star awake

Subject: RE: Favourite Phrases in Songs
From: GUEST,MeadowMuskrat
Date: 24 Sep 08 - 05:57 PM

from Gordon Bok "Fundy's long and Fundy's wide, Fundy's fog and rain and tide."

Subject: RE: Favourite Phrases in Songs
From: curmudgeon
Date: 24 Sep 08 - 06:04 PM

"She smiled all over her face,   she did,
They call me Jackie Monroe."

Subject: RE: Favourite Phrases in Songs
From: meself
Date: 24 Sep 08 - 06:14 PM

"He has a baseball team of whiskers all over his jaws"

- Five (Four?) Famous Fishermen, from the Helen Creighton collection; I forget who wrote it ...

Subject: RE: Favourite Phrases in Songs
From: Joe_F
Date: 24 Sep 08 - 09:41 PM

rocks the cradle and cries
too late, but never mind
some helped in hallways
the man of independent mind
drips Carnation from the can
the silent stars go by
in the fight that followed
that evening sun
sweet whips ding dong

Subject: RE: Favourite Phrases in Songs
From: Sandy Mc Lean
Date: 24 Sep 08 - 10:29 PM

Buddy Mac Donald ( Getting Dark Again)
"For the second time since we got up, it's getting dark again."

Scrooll down on music to title:

Buddy Mac Donald

Subject: RE: Favourite Phrases in Songs
From: Dave Hanson
Date: 25 Sep 08 - 04:00 AM

From ' A Pub With No Beer '

There's a far away look on the face of the bum.

eric

Subject: RE: Favourite Phrases in Songs
From: Oldguit
Date: 25 Sep 08 - 04:15 AM

Dad's gawn darn the dog track,
Muver's playin bingo,
Sister's cawtin on the soffa,
You wanna ear the spring go.

From: What a crazy world, sung by Joe Brown. Sheer poetry!

Oldguit Arr.

Subject: RE: Favourite Phrases in Songs
From: Acorn4
Date: 25 Sep 08 - 05:21 AM

Steve Knightley: RED DIESEL:-

"He said he sang a folksong once , but he didn't inhale"

Subject: RE: Favourite Phrases in Songs
From: BusyBee Paul
Date: 25 Sep 08 - 05:26 AM

From "Seat of Ease" by Duncan McFarlane

"That's when they spied the bare, tanned hide upon the seat of ease"

Subject: RE: Favourite Phrases in Songs
From: Oldguit
Date: 25 Sep 08 - 05:29 AM

Have you any dreams you'd like to sell. Fleetwood Mac.

Teach your children well / teach your parents well. Graham Nash.

I was floating in the ocean, greased in suntan lotion. Loving Spoonfull.

Subject: RE: Favourite Phrases in Songs
From: topical tom
Date: 25 Sep 08 - 08:18 AM

What can we do with the rest of our life
But love 'til we love it away,
Love 'til we love it away.

From "Thanksgiving Eve" by Bob Franke

Subject: RE: Favourite Phrases in Songs
From: GUEST,Peadar (formerly) of Portsmouth
Date: 25 Sep 08 - 11:13 AM

I don't know why the two that leap to mind both involve wings, but...


"On the wild and crazy wings of youth they went flying around in the rain,
Until their feathers once so fine were torn and tattered
In the end they traded their tired wings
For the resignation that living brings
They traded love's bright and fragile glow for the glitter and the rouge"
    --Jackson Brown, Before the Deluge


"Since their wings have got rusted,
the angels wanna wear my red shoes."
      --Elvis Costello, Red Shoes

Subject: RE: Favourite Phrases in Songs
From: quokka
Date: 25 Sep 08 - 11:22 AM

I second Jackson Browne's 'Before the Deluge'. Mind you, the first time I heard it , it was Christy Moore singin' it! I've got LOADS of phrases that stir the heart and soul in songs...Don't get me started or maybe I'll just bookmark this thread and get back to ya...(er... that's a promise, not a threat[!])
Cheers,
Quokka

Subject: RE: Favourite Phrases in Songs
From: John MacKenzie
Date: 25 Sep 08 - 11:30 AM

I ain't sayin' you treated me unkind
You coulda done better, but I don't mind.
You just kinda wasted my precious time.
So don't think twice, it's all right.

Oh how bitter, yet oh so true Bob.

JM

Subject: RE: Favourite Phrases in Songs
From: GUEST,glueman
Date: 25 Sep 08 - 11:39 AM

From Billy Bragg's New England.

I loved you then as I love you still
Tho I put you on a pedestal,
They put you on the pill
I dont feel bad about letting you go
I just feel sad about letting you know

I saw two shooting stars last night
I wished on them but they were only satellites
Is it wrong to wish on space hardware
I wish, I wish, I wish youd care

Subject: RE: Favourite Phrases in Songs
From: oldhippie
Date: 25 Sep 08 - 04:39 PM

David Mallett: "Life is a rainstorm, but love is the ark",

from Hard Time Love Song

Subject: RE: Favourite Phrases in Songs
From: astro
Date: 25 Sep 08 - 04:55 PM

I love

    "He knows his rhyme from his reason..."

Astro...

Subject: RE: Favourite Phrases in Songs
From: Phil Edwards
Date: 25 Sep 08 - 05:18 PM

Peter Blegvad's written some beauties. The middle eight of In Hell's Despite ("We'll build a heaven... in hell's despite") always gets me:

No one said,
No one said it would be,
Said it would,
Said it would be *easy*...

Subject: RE: Favourite Phrases in Songs
From: JeffB
Date: 25 Sep 08 - 07:58 PM

A great theme for a thread. Some of you (I hope including Rafflesbear) might find these lines appealing; some will scratch your heads and say "What's this about? ..." Well, they're just lines I especially like for various reasons.

Here's adieu sweet lovely Nancy :-

"The secrets of your heart, dear girl, are the best of my goodwill."

Not a profound line, but whenever I sing it I think, "Ah, that's so sweet." As I do with :-

"And may good angels send the rain on desert stretches sandy, and when the summer comes again, God grant it brings us Andy." (Andy's gone with cattle). For some reason that just brings the old lump into the throat. Just an old softie, me.

Clyde Water :-

"You had a cruel mother, Willie, and I have had another; and now we'll sleep in Clyde Water like sister and like brother."

Ballad of Springhill :-

"All their lives they had dug their grave - two miles of earth for a marker stone ... "

The Amphitrite :-

"So farewell Valparaiso and farewell for a while, and likewise all them Spanish girls all on the coast of Chile "

Captain Mansfield's fight :-

"If you must have my tops'ls down, come aboard and strike them down for me."

O good ale :-

"It is you that makes my friends my foes, it's you that makes me wear old clothes; but since you be so near my nose it's up you comes and down you goes."

Long Lankin :-

"There's blood in the parlour, there's blood in the hall, there's blood in the chamber where my lady did fall."

The molecatcher :-

"Ten pound?" cried the young man, "Oh that I don't mind - it only works out about threepence a time."

Shallow brown :-

"Though it breaks my heart to leave thee - though it breaks my heart to grieve thee."

Three maidens a-milking :-

"Here's a health to the bird in the bush ... and we'll drink down the moon and we'll drink up the sun, let the neighbours say little or much."

The unquiet grave :-

"Oh had you a kiss from my clay cold lips, my breath is earthy strong .... "

The week before Easter :-

"The young men of the forest they now ask of me - How many strawberries grow in the salt sea? And I answer them with a tear in my eye - How many ships sail in the forest?"

The yeoman's wooing (trying to get the girlfriend to decide) :-

"I will put on my best white slop and I will wear my yellow hose, and on my head a good grey hat and in it stick a lovely rose ... wherefore you should make no delay, and if you love me, love me now. Or I shall seek some othwerwhere, for I cannot come every day to woo."

Well, there's many another of course, but a personal selection like this would not be complete without something by Les Barker. From "The hard cheese of Old England" (do your own scansion) :-

"Those edam foreigners are not worth a mention; that old Gorgonzola's renowned for his stench and his brother Emile wrote novels in French, and it's oh the hard cheese of Old England, in Eng-e-land very hard cheese."

Subject: RE: Favourite Phrases in Songs
From: Mudlark
Date: 25 Sep 08 - 11:16 PM

Pancho and Lefty....The dust that Pancho bit down south ended up in Lefty's mouth

Just about any line from Tom Wait's Lookin' for the heart of Sat. Night

Hobo's Lullaby....Do not let your heart be troubled, if the world styles you a bum. For if your Mother lives, she loves you; you will always be your mother's son.

Subject: RE: Favourite Phrases in Songs
From: Joe_F
Date: 26 Sep 08 - 09:14 PM

If ever the dead can pray for the living

Subject: RE: Favourite Phrases in Songs
From: Pilgrim
Date: 26 Sep 08 - 09:56 PM

Wish I didn't know now what I didn't know then

Subject: RE: Favourite Phrases in Songs
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 27 Sep 08 - 08:44 AM

For I saw the new moon yestereen wi' the old moon in its arms.
Sir Patrick Spens.

I once was full o' Gil Maurice as the hip is of the stone.
Gil Maurice

For we are young and the world is wide.
Rambling Boys of Pleasure.

Some were playing cards and some were playing dice,
And some were standing round giving good advice.
Golden Vanity

Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: Favourite Phrases in Songs
From: Bat Goddess
Date: 27 Sep 08 - 09:09 AM

"She jumped right in beside him to keep herself warm,
Thinking that a sailor wouldn't do her any harm..."

From Home, Dearie, Home

Linn

Subject: RE: Favourite Phrases in Songs
From: Snuffy
Date: 27 Sep 08 - 09:17 AM

A lobster boiling in the pot,
A bluefish on the hook
They are suffering long, but nothing like
The ache I bear for you, my dear, Mary Anne.

Subject: RE: Favourite Phrases in Songs
From: Joe_F
Date: 27 Sep 08 - 08:17 PM

Pilgrim: That's a lovely line. What does it belong to?

Subject: RE: Favourite Phrases in Songs
From: open mike
Date: 27 Sep 08 - 09:27 PM

Kate Wolf..
"Here in California, the fruit hangs heavy on the vine
but there's no gold, i thought i'd warn ya,
and the hills turn brown in the summer time"

Hugh Prestwood,
"Way up on the mountain near the high timberline
there's a twisted old tree called the bristlecone pine
the wind there is bitter it cuts like a knife
keeps that tree holding on for dear life
but hold on it does, standing it's ground
standing as empires rise and fall down
when Jesus was gathering lambs to the fold
this tree was already a thousand years old.

Subject: RE: Favourite Phrases in Songs
From: bobad
Date: 27 Sep 08 - 09:33 PM

"I was so much older then
I'm younger than that now"

Da Bob

Subject: RE: Favourite Phrases in Songs
From: GUEST,Songster Bob
Date: 27 Sep 08 - 11:04 PM

"Be it murder or treason, oh, what a great crime,
To drown poor Naomi and leave her behind."

[Naomi Wise]

"The prophets old, they foretold,
Of a city to come all made with gold.
Peradventure they saw the day
Now dawning in Californi-ay."

[Banks of the Sacramento; the Hutchinson Family Singers, 1850]



Bob Clayton

Subject: RE: Favourite Phrases in Songs
From: open mike
Date: 28 Sep 08 - 10:41 PM

written by Julie Gold and performed by Nanci Griffith , Bette Midler and others:


From a distance the world looks blue and green,
and the snow-capped mountains white.
From a distance the ocean meets the stream,
and the eagle takes to flight.

From a distance, there is harmony,
and it echoes through the land.
It's the voice of hope, it's the voice of peace,
it's the voice of every man.

From a distance we all have enough,
and no one is in need.
And there are no guns, no bombs, and no disease,
no hungry mouths to feed.

From a distance we are instruments
marching in a common band.
Playing songs of hope, playing songs of peace.
They're the songs of every man.
God is watching us. God is watching us.
God is watching us from a distance.

From a distance you look like my friend,
even though we are at war.
From a distance I just cannot comprehend
what all this fighting is for.

From a distance there is harmony,
and it echoes through the land.
And it's the hope of hopes, it's the love of loves,
it's the heart of every man.

It's the hope of hopes, it's the love of loves.
This is the song of every man.
And God is watching us, God is watching us,
God is watching us from a distance.
Oh, God is watching us, God is watching.
God is watching us from a distance.

_____

there are so many phrases here..i will jsut post the whole song..
is it in the D.T. i wonder?

Subject: RE: Favourite Phrases in Songs
From: Janie
Date: 28 Sep 08 - 11:01 PM

If dreams were lightning, and thunder was desire
This old world would have burned up a long time ago.      John Prine

Subject: RE: Favourite Phrases in Songs
From: Bert
Date: 29 Sep 08 - 01:45 AM

Nice one oldguit.

I love that song.

Law caught me out thievin', took me down the nick
The sergeant made out his report, and he layed it on real thick
He said "I'll get your parents", I answered with a grin
"Save yourself the trouble, mate, you'll never find 'em in"

Subject: RE: Favourite Phrases in Songs
From: Oldguit
Date: 29 Sep 08 - 06:49 AM

Hey Bert

They don't write em like that anymore, sadly!

another goodun that I love is:

So I bought meself a guitar, bout a year ago
bloke said I could learn it in a week or so
he gave me a little book, pick or two
He said e'are mate now its up to you

Unsure of origin but sung by saint Lonnie.

Oldguit Arr

Subject: RE: Favourite Phrases in Songs
From: Frank_Finn
Date: 29 Sep 08 - 09:28 AM

Mary from Loughrea

The sun will miss the glowing of your golden yellow hair
The lads will miss you from the dance on a Sunday evening fair.
The grass will miss your flying steps as you sweep the dew away
But I will miss you most of all, my Mary from Loughrea

Subject: RE: Favourite Phrases in Songs
From: Michael
Date: 29 Sep 08 - 12:05 PM

"What makes you go abroad fighting with strangers
When you could stay at home free from all dangers?"

Mike

Subject: RE: Favourite Phrases in Songs
From: Bat Goddess
Date: 29 Sep 08 - 01:15 PM

I'm also very fond of the phrase in "Cherry Tree Carol" --

"So Mary gathered cherries while Joseph stood around..."

Linn

Subject: RE: Favourite Phrases in Songs
From: GUEST,Fantum
Date: 29 Sep 08 - 04:20 PM

Her breasts they were warm an by eck they were big uns
A pale shade of white like wet tripe in moonlight

Subject: RE: Favourite Phrases in Songs
From: Joe G
Date: 29 Sep 08 - 04:50 PM

John Tams

'And go we must - no longer can we tarry'

Jez Lowe

Greek Lightning - whole song but especially

'At the wettest of Durham big meetings/oh how your heart it was easily won/I shouted for tunes by the Beatles/not that fat man from Athens they kept putting on' & 'Sometimes call me a coww then you think I'm your mam'

Loads more by Robb Johnson, Tom Bliss, George Papavergis spring to mind but Dave Vermond's

'We're raffling off the headmaster to pay for the new school roof' is one I have never forgtten!

Subject: RE: Favourite Phrases in Songs
From: GUEST,John from Elsie`s Band
Date: 29 Sep 08 - 05:05 PM

"Home and Abroad" by Jerry Butlers Runaways (Paul Deane, 2003)
"His voice, though plaintive, breathy and faint
There was no mistaking, he said "Mines a pint"

Subject: RE: Favourite Phrases in Songs
From: Joe_F
Date: 29 Sep 08 - 08:33 PM

Bat Goddess: I am fond of that one, too. It is obviously a recent American addition (in Britain, one person cannot stand around), but it is so perfectly in the spirit of the original that I take care to sing it.

Subject: RE: Favourite Phrases in Songs
From: GUEST,Hellene
Date: 29 Sep 08 - 09:05 PM

Glueman, you beat me to it. "It's wrong to wish on space hardware" has always been a fave of mine.

I will set my fox to run and with my quiver and my gun
I will ride to the hunting with my hounds.
(Anne Lister - The Hunter)

"You shall strike the very first blow, strike it like a man.
I shall strike the very next blow, and I'll kill you if I can"
(Matty Groves)

Tracing one warm line, through a land so wild and savage
And make a Northwest Passage to the sea
(OK, that probably owes something to Paul Gross and Callum Keith Rennie)

Subject: RE: Favourite Phrases in Songs
From: Warsaw Ed
Date: 29 Sep 08 - 10:37 PM

I can just see the members of the polar bear club swimming in the ocean
"..See the bathers so bold as their noses turn blue.."
Bob Franke "Under The Willows"

Subject: RE: Favourite Phrases in Songs
From: Fred Maslan
Date: 30 Sep 08 - 08:16 PM

"you can't jump a jet plane
Like you can a frieght train"

From "early morning rain"

Subject: RE: Favourite Phrases in Songs
From: Jayto
Date: 30 Sep 08 - 08:24 PM

Promises given
Promises broken
words stain my lips
just like blood on my hands -- Lyle Lovett

This is the best part of the day
the dawn the final cleansing breathe
unsullied yet by acrid fumes
or death's cacophony
the rank refuge of unchained ambitions --- Steve Earle

Subject: RE: Favourite Phrases in Songs
From: GUEST,TJ in San Diego
Date: 01 Oct 08 - 11:48 AM

Perhaps because three generations in our family went to sea with the U.S. Navy - aviators all, this hymn has always resonated with me. Though I've been accused of being stoic on occasion, and no fan of war, the memory of my lost heroes always brings a tear when this one is sung or played.


"Eternal Father, strong to save,
Whose arm hath bound the restless wave,
Who bidd'st the mighty ocean deep,
Its own appointed limits keep.

Oh hear us when we cry to Thee,
For those in peril on the sea! Amen."

Subject: RE: Favourite Phrases in Songs
From: Jayto
Date: 01 Oct 08 - 12:13 PM

Pour the sun upon the ground
stand to form a shadow
watch it grow into a night
and fill a spinning sky --- Townes Van Zandt the highway kind

You know you can't hang yourself
if you don't have enough rope ---- Chris Knight Enough Rope

Does anyone know where the love of God goes
When the waves turn the minutes to hours --- Gordon Lightfoot Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald

I'm a rolling stone all alone and lost
for this life of sin I've paid the cost
when I pass by all the people say
just another guy on that lost highway --- Hank Williams Lost Highway

I hurt myself today to see if I still feel
I focus on the pain the only thing thats real
&
and you can have it all my empire of dirt
I will let you down I will make you hurt ----- Trent Reznor Hurt

My daddy worked in the coal mine
until the company shut it down
then he sit around and drank himself blind
until they put him back underground --- Steve Earle Oxycontin Blues

We were bad for one another
but we were good at having fun --- Robert Earl Keen Corpus Christi Bay

Gotta keep moving
gotta keep moving
Blues falling down like hail --- Robert Johnson Hellhounds on my Trail

I always play Russian Roulette in my head
&
I will always remember to forget about you --- Tom Waits My favorite Color is Red

She had that kind of razor sadness --- Tom Waits

It was the kind of place that smelled like kerosene and you took on the dreams of the ones that had slept there before --- Tom Waits

They drive along the pipeline
they tango till their sore
they take apart their nightmares
and they leave them by the door --- Tom Waits Tango till thier sore

Take you hatred out on me
make your victim my head
you never ever believed in me
I am your torniquet --- Marilyn Manson Torniquet

The wind was as steady as the throttle on a funeral train -- John Prine Mexican Home

I met her on the night of fire and noise -- Nick Cave Do you Love Me

A cheap hotel a long way from my home
so many people make you feel so alone
dreams die easy out here in these streets
while your heart grows cold in the city heat --- Steve Earle Angry Young Man

Subject: RE: Favourite Phrases in Songs
From: GUEST,Rafflesbear
Date: 12 Jan 09 - 03:43 PM

This world has only one sweet moment set aside for us

from "who wants to live forever" by Brian May

Subject: RE: Favourite Phrases in Songs
From: Joybell
Date: 12 Jan 09 - 04:03 PM

Leaving aside Dylan -- because there's too many.

"The words of the prophet written on the subway wall"

"I'd fly away from my false true lover"

"I swim the seas within my mind and the pine trees laugh green laughter"

Subject: RE: Favourite Phrases in Songs
From: ClaireBear
Date: 12 Jan 09 - 04:13 PM

"Hell is deep, hell is dark, hell is full of mice."

(from "Dives and Lazarus," trad.)


"Pittsburgh has the Steelers and the Pirates and the thieves."

(from "Grand Larceny," John Gorka, in a song about the theft of his guitar from a car parked on a Pittsburgh street)

Subject: RE: Favourite Phrases in Songs
From: GUEST,KP
Date: 12 Jan 09 - 04:32 PM

'The man with the cane and Italian shoes, he walks like a lion looking for a lonely Christian'
Richard Thompson - the Egypt Room

'On the little man's shirt are two skeletons screwing, and the legend says "Love never Dies" '
Martin Simpson - Love Never Dies

'In the Misty Crystal Glitter of the wild and windward spray'.....'Now from Washington and Oregon you can hear the factories hum, making chrome and making manganese and white aluminum'
Both Woody Guthrie - Grand Coulee Dam

'They call her Natasha when she looks like Elsie'
Elvis Costello - I don't want to go to Chelsea

Subject: RE: Favourite Phrases in Songs
From: GUEST,Shimrod
Date: 12 Jan 09 - 05:54 PM

Lord Bateman:

"She sail-ed east and she sail-ed west
'Til Turpenstones she did chance to spy
Then she went cracking of her fair white fingers
As for Lord Bateman she did enquire."

Subject: RE: Favourite Phrases in Songs
From: Clifton53
Date: 12 Jan 09 - 06:02 PM

" If you're treading on thin ice, then you might as well dance"

Jesse Winchester

Subject: RE: Favourite Phrases in Songs
From: Mark Ross
Date: 12 Jan 09 - 06:06 PM

"We'll be out in the marble orchard where the tombstones are in bloom,
Underneath the green grass, there's always plenty of room."

50 YEARS FROM NOW
Haywire Mac McClintock

Mark Ross

Subject: RE: Favourite Phrases in Songs
From: Amos
Date: 12 Jan 09 - 06:15 PM

"Change and decay on every hand I see;
O, Thou Who changeth not, abide with me,"




"Such a coaxsome elf, I was ashamed of myself
For to find I was truly there!"


and many, many others....




A

Subject: RE: Favourite Phrases in Songs
From: GUEST,mg
Date: 12 Jan 09 - 06:43 PM

McALPINe's god was a well filled hod..from McAlpine's Fusiliers..which I think has the highest ratio of favorite phrases of any song I can think of..mg

Subject: RE: Favourite Phrases in Songs
From: Joybell
Date: 12 Jan 09 - 06:45 PM

"Come home with me, Madge, when I go the change will do you good."

"I will twine with my mingles of raven/raving black hair"

"First did come the thick, thick blood and next did come the thin
Last did come the very heart's blood there was no more within."

Of young men --
"They're like the stars of a Summer's morning, they'll first appear and then they're gone."

"She had to leave her country home because the wolf was at the door, and her father had fallen down and broken his leg."

"Ring down the curtain I can't sing tonight."

Subject: RE: Favourite Phrases in Songs
From: Joybell
Date: 12 Jan 09 - 06:49 PM

"My life goes on in enless song above Earth's lamentation."

Subject: RE: Favourite Phrases in Songs
From: Joe_F
Date: 12 Jan 09 - 08:02 PM

Amos: changest

Subject: RE: Favourite Phrases in Songs
From: Tootler
Date: 13 Jan 09 - 12:40 AM

A couple from Burns

"Now westlin winds, and slaught'ring guns
Bring August's pleasant weather;"

and

"As o'er the hill the eastern star tells bughtin' time is near, my Jo,
And owsen frae the furrowed field return sae dowf and weary o,
Doon by the burn where scented birks wi' dew are hangin' clear, my Jo,
I'll meet ye on the lea rig, my ain kind dearie o."

I had to put the whole verse in. It is such a wonderful description of dusk.

One from Graceland by Paul Simon

"The Mississippi Delta is shining like a National Guitar"

Subject: RE: Favourite Phrases in Songs
From: Clifton53
Date: 13 Jan 09 - 02:49 PM

'and all I've done, for want of wit, to memory now I can't recall'

Subject: RE: Favourite Phrases in Songs
From: Rog Peek
Date: 13 Jan 09 - 06:06 PM

They're all in here:

The Bells
(Edgar Allen Poe/ Phil Ochs)

Hear the sledges with the bells         
Silver bells
What a world of merriment                  
Their melody foretells            
How they tinkle, tinkle, tinkle      
In the icy air of night
All the heavens seem to twinkle
With a crystalline delight
Keeping time, time, time
With a sort of Runic rhyme
From the tintinnabulation
That so musically wells
From the bells, bells, bells, bells, bells, bells, bells
From the jingling and the tinkling of the bells

Hear the mellow wedding bells
Golden bells
What a world of happiness
Their harmony foretells
Through the balmy air of night
How they ring out their delight
Through the dances and the yells
And the rapture that impels
How it swells, how it dwells
On the future, how it tells
From the swinging and the ringing of the molten golden bells
Of the bells, bells, bells, bells, bells, bells, bells
Of the rhyming and the chiming of the bells

Hear the loud alarum bells
Brazen bells
What a tale of terror now
Their turbulency tells
Much too horrified to speak
Oh, they can only shriek
For all the ears to know
How the danger ebbs and flows
Leaping higher, higher, higher
With a desperate desire
In a clamorous appealing to the mercy of the fire
With the bells, bells, bells, bells, bells, bells, bells
With the clamor and the clanging of the bells

Hear the tolling of the bells
Iron bells
What a world of solemn thought their monody compels
For all the sound that floats
From the rust within our throats
And the people sit and groan
In their muffled monotone
And the tolling, tolling, tolling
Feels a glory in the rolling
From the throbbing and the sobbing
Of the melancholy bells
Oh, the bells, bells, bells, bells, bells, bells, bells
Oh, the moaning and the groaning of the bells.


Rog

Subject: RE: Favourite Phrases in Songs
From: GUEST,Rafflesbear
Date: 13 Jan 09 - 06:40 PM

I think you're missing the point Rog - this thread is for one-liners - kind of helps if you read the first post

Subject: RE: Favourite Phrases in Songs
From: Joe_F
Date: 13 Jan 09 - 08:42 PM

Well, if we're going to have Burns, then:

But whilst with both hands I can hold the glass steady

The man of independent mind,
He looks and laughs at a' that.

'And sh---, ye bitch,' the echoes' roar'd
Lincluden wa's amang.
(-- "Grim Grizzle", which it seems has not been set to music, tho it ought to be. Lincluden is a church, whose ruins are extant, in case anyone wants to repeat the experiment.)

*

The sun shines owre the westlin hills by the lamplicht o the moon
-- Eppie Morrie

Subject: RE: Favourite Phrases in Songs
From: mg
Date: 14 Jan 09 - 01:58 AM

where are the lads who stood with me when history was made...from the boys of the old brigade. mg

Subject: RE: Favourite Phrases in Songs
From: Rog Peek
Date: 14 Jan 09 - 02:47 AM

No Rafflesbar, I'm not missing the point, I did read it, it wasn't just one liners it was 'some of your favourite phrases from songs - you know a couple of lines, a line or just half a line' - I just couldn't choose between them.

Rog

Subject: RE: Favourite Phrases in Songs
From: GUEST,seth in Olympia
Date: 14 Jan 09 - 03:08 AM

"that red bandanna tied around your auburn hair
you look like you oughta be somebody's wife somewhere"
                                          Merle Haggard

" Papa got us in the pick-up
With a damp rag across our nose(s)
And we drove off through the cloud
That he once plowed
In long straight handsome rows"
                                        Lawrence Hammond
" It balances on your head
Like a mattress balances
on a bottle of wine"
                                        Bob Dylan

Subject: RE: Favourite Phrases in Songs
From: GUEST
Date: 14 Jan 09 - 09:37 AM

In this era of Uk folk perhaps settling back from a very high point what about"NOTHING EVER HAPPENS TILL SOMEONE LIGHTS THE FUSE"
If you are wondering it is from Ghost in blue suade shoes by Lindisfarne.

Subject: RE: Favourite Phrases in Songs
From: An Buachaill Caol Dubh
Date: 14 Jan 09 - 10:00 AM

There's a good one in "Lady of Lough Rea", intended to signify something impossible (rather like the Scots, "The blude-red rose at Yule may bloom"):

"Ah, rose-leaf maid, 'tis easy to blame the wastrel now;
But, who was ever able for to harrow with a plough?"

Further to contributions from Tootler and Joe F, Yeats greatly admired Burns's line about

"The wan moon is setting behind the white wave,
And Time is setting with me...",

while Walter Scott said that

"Had we never lov'd sae kindly,
Had we never lov'd sae blindly,
Never met, or never parted,
We had ne'er been broken hearted"

contains the essence of a thousand love songs (or stories). Note, incidentally, that "parted" would be pronounced close to "perr-tit", with "hearted" rhyming.

Subject: RE: Favourite Phrases in Songs
From: GUEST
Date: 14 Jan 09 - 10:55 AM

"They couldn't do to me no harm,
so they slew my baby in my arms
and left me nought to wrap him in
but the bloody sheet that he lay in."

Amazing.

Subject: RE: Favourite Phrases in Songs
From: Stephen L. Rich
Date: 14 Jan 09 - 11:41 PM

From Sandy Andina's song about the Santa Ana Winds called "The Devil Wind"


"Why do people fear the Reaper when it's the wind that wields the blade?"

Subject: RE: Favourite Phrases in Songs
From: raredance
Date: 15 Jan 09 - 01:01 AM

Tom Russell on Pain - physical or emotional

It goes away, it might take years
Or a hundred thousand tears.
But one day the sky will clear, it goes away

Subject: RE: Favourite Phrases in Songs
From: meself
Date: 15 Jan 09 - 01:46 AM

I fought the law, and the law won.

Subject: RE: Favourite Phrases in Songs
From: boosh
Date: 15 Jan 09 - 11:09 AM

"if songs were lines in a conversation, the situation would be fine"

Subject: RE: Favourite Phrases in Songs
From: GUEST,Albert O'Balsam
Date: 15 Jan 09 - 06:12 PM

From 'My Home In Sweet Glenlee'

Subject: RE: Favourite Phrases in Songs
From: GUEST,Albert O'Balsam
Date: 15 Jan 09 - 06:18 PM

I found amid the multitude a creature of great pulchritude

Subject: RE: Favourite Phrases in Songs
From: Hallf-A-Mo
Date: 15 Jan 09 - 06:20 PM

My life had been a wilderness
Untouched by fortunes gaze
Had fate not linked my love to her
Sweet Rose of Alendale.

Or

And people who walk about never ask why,
The rich uns can live, and your poor daddy die.
And if they should ask me, Lord, I'd only cry,
For the Sun and the Moon's fallen down from the sky.

Or

With the love of your life,
Spend a lifetime of love,
Make her yours forevermore.

Or

So kiss me my sweet, and so let us part.
And when I grow too old to dream,
Your kiss will live in my heart.
(sniff)
God bless Sigmund Romberg!

Subject: RE: Favourite Phrases in Songs
From: Jason Xion Wang
Date: 29 Aug 10 - 09:54 PM

"Are you going away with no word of farewell
Will there be not a trace left behind
I could've loved you better, didn't mean to be unkind
You know that was the last thing on my mind"

"I've looked at life from both sides now
From win and lose, and still somehow
It's life's illusions I recall
I really don't know life at all"

"My body is merely the shell of my soul
But the flesh must be given it's due
Like a pony that carries it's master back home
Like an old that's tried and been true

My spirit will never be broken or caught
For the soul is a free-flying thing
Like an eagle that needs neither comfort nor thought
To rise up on glorious wings"

"For the heart of man's a palace
And his dreams are as the sunlight
They burn away the darkness, as they warm the freezing cold
As an eagle flying higher, as a river through the canyon
The diamond star shines down upon, a pathway to the soul"

"But for just one fleeting moment
The answer seemed so clear
Heaven's not beyond the clouds
It's just beyond the fear"

Tom Paxton, Joni Mitchell, the last three by Joe Henry.

Subject: RE: Favourite Phrases in Songs
From: MGM·Lion
Date: 30 Aug 10 - 12:35 AM

That wonderfully confused version of Scarboro Fair ballad burden, "Sober and grave grow merry in time" ~~ makes a crazy kind of sense.


Is there a better epitome of being in a great hurry than the widespread ballad floater!?:

"When she came to the riverside she fell to her breast and she swam
And when she came to the other side she took to her heels and she ran."

~Michael~

Subject: RE: Favourite Phrases in Songs
From: GUEST,Peter Trouy
Date: 30 Aug 10 - 09:52 AM

30.08.10

"Broken hearts and dirty windows
make life dificult to see.
Thats why last night and this morning
allways look the same to me...
John Prine

or:
"Beauty walks a razors edge, some day i'll make it mine".

Dylan

Peter Trout

Subject: RE: Favourite Phrases in Songs
From: GUEST,HiLo
Date: 30 Aug 10 - 10:16 AM

Every generation throws a hero up the pop charts Paul Simon

Take down this mast of gold, set up a mast of tree,
For it becomes not a forsaken maid to sail so royally..Lass of Loch Royal

The ghost of electricity howls in the bones of her face Dylan

The priest he sat in the airport bar, he was wearing his fathers tie Joni Mitchell

Ask them easy questions, they'll tell you easy lies..Richard Farina

She danced away thier gold and thier bright money..Bonnie Lass of Anglesy

I lit a thin green candle to make you jealous of me,
But the room just filled up with mosqitoes, they heard that my body was free   Cohen

Subject: RE: Favourite Phrases in Songs
From: Joe_F
Date: 30 Aug 10 - 06:05 PM

MtheGM: My own daemon made it "Sparsely sage, those wary in time!".

Subject: RE: Favourite Phrases in Songs
From: GUEST,Len Wallace
Date: 30 Aug 10 - 06:11 PM

One Big Union that's our plan
and the I.W.W.'s your only man,
The flames of discontent we'll fan
For the cause that never dies.

From Andy Irvine's "Never Tire of the Road".
Love singing that verse.

Yours for the cause and music that never dies,

Len Wallace

Subject: RE: Favourite Phrases in Songs
From: Cool Beans
Date: 30 Aug 10 - 06:23 PM

A flat that would flatten the Taj Mahal.
--Frank Loesser, "Guys & Dolls"