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

Subject: RE: Lines That Break Your Heart
From: MGM·Lion
Date: 22 Aug 13 - 04:58 PM

...and I repeat this from an earlier thread; altho I have remarried and my life has turned around since I posted the message below, I still can't sing, or hear, or think of that song without some ♥·break ~~

Subject: RE: Songs You Can't Sing for Crying
From: MtheGM - PM
Date: 24 Jan 10 - 06:50 AM
Another one for purely personal reasons. Fair & Tender Ladies — I have a v nice photo of me singing it at a party in 1958. Whenever my wife showed that pic to anybody she would say "As the flash went off for that photograph it flashed thru my mind 'That's the young man I'm going to marry'"; & so she did - for nearly ½-century. And now she's dead. And so I can't sing it any more for tears. And here they come now...

~M~

Subject: RE: Lines That Break Your Heart
From: Ebbie
Date: 22 Aug 13 - 06:52 PM

"Don't go yet. Oh, don't go yet."
My visit to my friend, Michael,that I recounted yesterday was timely. He died this morning. RIP, Mike and congratulations on a long life well lived.

Subject: RE: Lines That Break Your Heart
From: GUEST,Nigel Gatherer
Date: 22 Aug 13 - 07:10 PM

I don't know why, but these lines from Ray Davies tug at my heart strings:

Now I think of what my mamma told me,
She always said that it would never ever work out;
But all I want to do is make some money
And bring you home some wine.
For I don't ever want you to see me
Standing in that line;
'Cause that union man's got such a hold over me;
He's the man who decides if I live or I die, if I starve, or I eat.
Then he walks up to me and the sun begins to shine.
Then he walks right past and I know that I've got to get back in the line.

("Get Back Into Line")

Subject: RE: Lines That Break Your Heart
From: Janie
Date: 22 Aug 13 - 09:32 PM

Oh the days will be empty
The nights so long with out you my love

"Your Long Journey" Rosa Lee and Doc Watson.

Subject: RE: Lines That Break Your Heart
From: Janie
Date: 22 Aug 13 - 09:34 PM

Correction "without"

Subject: RE: Lines That Break Your Heart
From: GUEST,mg
Date: 22 Aug 13 - 11:08 PM

i was the happiest in all the clan
sae sair may i repine
for donald was the bravest man
and donald he was mine

Subject: RE: Lines That Break Your Heart
From: George Papavgeris
Date: 23 Aug 13 - 12:00 AM

a) The last two lines of "Crossing the Bar" (agree, GUEST, Fyldeplayer)

b) From Eric Bogle's The Band Played Waltzing Matilda:
   And when I woke up in my hospital bed
And saw what it had done, I wished I was dead
Never knew there were worse things than dying

c) From Billy Joel's And So It Goes:
And this is why my eyes are closed
It's just as well for all I've seen
And so it goes, and so it goes
And you're the only one who knows

d) And the absolute killer for me is the following from Henry Lawson's Scots Of The Riverina:
And the old man died at the table when the old wife's back was turned.
Face down on his bare arms folded he sank with his wild grey hair
Outspread on the open Bible and a name re-written there.

Subject: RE: Lines That Break Your Heart
From: MGM·Lion
Date: 23 Aug 13 - 12:16 AM

I do not weep for my House Carpenter
Nor yet for any store
But I weep for the sake of my pretty little babe
That I never shall see any more

Subject: RE: Lines That Break Your Heart
From: MGM·Lion
Date: 23 Aug 13 - 02:55 AM

..Pray do not mock me.
I am a very foolish fond old man,
Four score and upward, not an hour more nor less...

King Lear IV vi

~M~

I am 81 btw

Subject: RE: Lines That Break Your Heart
From:
Date: 23 Aug 13 - 04:16 AM

And another eye for another eye till everyone is blind.

Tommy Sands, 'There were Roses'

Jack

Subject: RE: Lines That Break Your Heart
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 23 Aug 13 - 04:23 AM

MacColl used to tell the story of having to learn the ballad' Edom of Gordon' for a series of Poetry and Song albums.
It was a ballad he said had never attracted him "about wealthy noble families mindlessly slaughtering each other - who on earth could you possibly identify with?"
He re-read it through many dozens of times and finally, shortly before he was due to record it, he focused on the verses where the Douglas family, having been cornered in the burning castle, bundled the youngest daughter in sheets and dropped her over the wall, hoping she'd escape the flames - the assailant, Gordon, 'caught her on is spear'.

"And Gordon turned her ower and ower and oh, her face was wan,
He said, "You are the first that e'er I wished alive again".
And oh he turned her ower and ower, and oh, her face was white.
"I might have spared that bonny face to be some man's delight.""

MacColl said, "The waste, the ****** waste of human life, that's what those songs should be about."
Still works for me.
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: Lines That Break Your Heart
From: MGM·Lion
Date: 23 Aug 13 - 05:39 AM

It's these little moments in the big ballads that do it indeed, Jim.

For you have had one cruel mother, Willie,
And I have had another,
And here we'll lie in Clyde's water
Like sister and like brother.

~M~

Subject: RE: Lines That Break Your Heart
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 23 Aug 13 - 05:51 AM

It is indeed, in the middle of violence and mayhem they gently tap you on the shoulder and point out that it's human beings you're singing about - it's what makes them "big ballads".
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: Lines That Break Your Heart
From: GUEST,kendall
Date: 23 Aug 13 - 06:03 AM

So, I'll drink to the times that are passed, and the days when we stood on the shore, to you I will raise up my glass, for I know that I'll see you no more. (Robbie O'Connell)

Subject: RE: Lines That Break Your Heart
From: Fossil
Date: 23 Aug 13 - 06:47 AM

- Read a book, or study art/ All the remedies don't work for me/ since you broke my heart.

Don Everly

Subject: RE: Lines That Break Your Heart
From: Bill D
Date: 23 Aug 13 - 10:48 AM

"...Once I had a yaller dog, his name was Towser Jenkins.
The butcher cut his tail off with a cleaver...
Towser had his trademark on every cat in town,
And when he spotted one, he'd never leave her.

He wore his legs off stumpy, chasin' milk carts 'round the country.
Had bunions on his knees from jumpin' ditches.
Had all the hair wore off his ribs
From chasin' cats around the corn cribs...
But empty is the doghouse, Towsers poisoned.

No more he'll look for liver down beside the Suwanee River,
No more will boys baptize him in the sewer..
No more homeward will he wail, with ten cans tied to his tail..
For empty is the doghouse...Towser's poisoned."

...from a Folk Legacy album by Harry Tufts.


It is strange...no matter how 'straight' I sing this, it often evokes chuckles in the first 2 verses, which seems to keep many from reacting to the sadness of the third. Maybe there's just no way easily react to the ending..... In some ways, we take cruelty to animals harder than wholesale slaughter of troops in battle.

Subject: RE: Lines That Break Your Heart
From: fat B****rd
Date: 24 Aug 13 - 05:20 AM

Why is the bedroom so cold?
Turned away on your side.
Is my timing that flawed?
Our respect run so dry?
Yet there's still this appeal,
That we've kept through our lives.

Love will tear us apart -Joy Division

Subject: RE: Lines That Break Your Heart
From: GUEST,Jaze
Date: 24 Aug 13 - 06:02 PM

Cause if love means forever expecting nothing returned
then I hope I'll be given another whole lifetime to learn...Joan Baez

Subject: RE: Lines That Break Your Heart
From: GUEST,Vrdpkr
Date: 24 Aug 13 - 08:10 PM

The black smoke choo-choos have gone away
Bumming, it's just not the same
Dreams are few and far between,
But memory seldom fails.
Waiting down there by the track
For her master to come back
You could count on seeing that old dog
Queen of the Rails

Utah Phillips

Subject: RE: Lines That Break Your Heart
From: GUEST,kendall
Date: 25 Aug 13 - 06:33 AM

...a little child strolled onto the track and filled them all with dread.
"MyGod" the hoghead shouted, as he slammed on on all the brakes, "I'll never stop this SP train, she aint got what it takes"
Up stepped this bold young fireman,..... he piled his loop around a pole that stood beside the tracks, then he tied the other end of it around that big smoke stack.
He jerked that train clear off the track and caused an awful wreck,
the fireman laid there on the track with the engine on his neck.
We will all remember that 45th of May for there were many brave young hearts all filled fear that day, they buried him by the wayside where the prairie winds blow wild
He killed 200 passengers but, thank God he saved the child.

Subject: RE: Lines That Break Your Heart
From: Bert
Date: 25 Aug 13 - 09:01 PM

Sleep softly my pretty one
Sleep softly my darling
You promised a happiness that only you could bring
You came for a moment
and then you were gone
Faded away like a snowflake in spring
      
Sleep softly my pretty one
Sleep softly my love

Subject: RE: Lines That Break Your Heart
From: Sir Roger de Beverley
Date: 26 Aug 13 - 04:10 PM

"Though we're apart you bother me still"



Blueberry Hill

Subject: RE: Lines That Break Your Heart
From: Ebbie
Date: 26 Aug 13 - 08:37 PM

Really? lol ("Though we're apart, you're part of me still...")

Subject: RE: Lines That Break Your Heart
From: GUEST,kendall
Date: 27 Aug 13 - 05:37 AM

Which part? the sugar, the mash,...

Subject: RE: Lines That Break Your Heart
From: VirginiaTam
Date: 27 Aug 13 - 07:15 AM

For obvious reasons this

Our first child took in times like these
A cruel week in dyin'.
All day upon her father's knees
Or on my breast a-lyin'.
The tears we shed, the prayers we said
Were awful, wild, despairin'
I pulled three through and buried two
Since then, now I'm past carin'. (Past Carin')

Subject: RE: Lines That Break Your Heart
From: GUEST
Date: 27 Aug 13 - 07:59 AM

Now it's every month I get a check from some government bureaucrat
And it's every month I tear it up, and send the damn thing back.

             The Ballad of Penny Evan, Steve Goodman.

Subject: RE: Lines That Break Your Heart
From: frogprince
Date: 27 Aug 13 - 08:06 AM

Almost any of "Touch a Name on the Wall", by Joel Mabus, but the last lines for sure:

But God bless the wall that brings us together,
And reminds us of what we've been through.
And God damn the liars and the tin-plated heroes,
That trade on the blood of these men.
And God give us the strength to stand up and tell 'em, "Never again!"

Subject: RE: Lines That Break Your Heart
From: Mark Dowding
Date: 27 Aug 13 - 08:14 AM

From "Joe Peel" by Peter Bond
"We all turned up to say goodbye,
The church was filled to overflowing"

I've not been able to sing that since dad passed away in January.

Subject: RE: Lines That Break Your Heart
From: Sir Roger de Beverley
Date: 27 Aug 13 - 09:09 AM

"You bother me still" is so much better - the whole song is spoilt for me now I know that it is really "You're part of me still."

R

Subject: RE: Lines That Break Your Heart
From: Ebbie
Date: 27 Aug 13 - 10:23 AM

Sorry. :)

Subject: RE: Lines That Break Your Heart
From: KT
Date: 28 Aug 13 - 12:59 AM

Sir Roger and Ebbie,   Don't let it be spoilt Roger. Check this out! Delightful!    "It's a happy enchilada and you think you're gonna drown." John Prine -That's the Way that the World Goes Round. Delightful!   have a smile

Subject: RE: Lines That Break Your Heart
From: MGM·Lion
Date: 28 Aug 13 - 10:29 AM

At last we reached the other side in two and twenty days
We were taken as passengers by a man and led round in six different ways
And we all of us drank a parting glass in case we might never meet more
And we drank a last health to old Ireland and Paddy's Green Shamrock Shore