Beeswing

I was nineteen when I came to town, they called it the Summer of Love

They were burning babies, burning flags, the hawks against the doves

I took a job in the steamie down on Cauldrum Street

And I fell in love with a laundry girl who was working next to me

Oh she was a rare thing, fine as a bee's wing

So fine a breath of wind might blow her away

She was a lost child, oh she was running wild

She said "as long as there's no price on love, I'll stay

And you wouldn't want me any other way"

Brown hair zig-zag around her face and a look of half-surprise

Like a fox caught in the headlights, there was animal in her eyes

She said "Young man, oh can't you see I'm not the factory kind

If you don't take me out of here I'll surely lose my mind"

Oh she was a rare thing, fine as a bee's wing

So fine that I might crush her where she lay

She was a lost child, she was running wild

She said "as long as there's no price on love, I'll stay

And you wouldn't want me any other way"

We busked around the market towns and picked fruit down in Kent

And we could tinker lamps and pots and knives wherever we went

And I said that we might settle down, get a few acres dug

Fire burning in the hearth and babies on the rug

She said "Oh man, you foolish man, it surely sounds like hell

You might be lord of half the world, you'll not own me as well"

Oh she was a rare thing, fine as a bee's wing

So fine a breath of wind might blow her away

She was a lost child, oh she was running wild

She said "as long as there's no price on love, I'll stay

And you wouldn't want me any other way"

We was camping down the Gower one time, the work was pretty good

She thought we shouldn't wait for the frost and I thought maybe we should

We was drinking more in those days and tempers reached a pitch

And like a fool I let her run with the rambling itch

Oh the last I heard she's sleeping rough back on the Derby beat

White Horse in her hip pocket and a wolfhound at her feet

And they say she even married once, a man named Romany Brown

But even a gypsy caravan was too much settling down

And they say her flower is faded now, hard weather and hard booze

But maybe that's just the price you pay for the chains you refuse

Oh she was a rare thing, fine as a bee's wing

And I miss her more than ever words could say

If I could just taste all of her wildness now

If I could hold her in my arms today

Well I wouldn't want her any other way