Lyrics The Legionnaire's Lament - The Decemberists

The Legionnaire's Lament

I’m a legionnaire
Camel in disrepair
Hoping for a frigidaire to come passing by
I am on reprieve
Lacking my joie de vive
Missing my gay Paris
In the desert dry
And I wrote my girl
Told her I would not return
I’ve terribly taken a turn
For the worse now I fear
It’s been a year or more
Since they shipped me to this foreign shore
Fighting in a foreign war
So far away from my home
If only summer rain would fall
On the houses and the boulevards
And the sidewalk bagatelles it' like a dream
With the roar of cars
And the lulling of the cafe bars
The sweetly sleeping sweeping of the Seine
Lord I don’t know if I’ll ever be back again
Medicating in the sun
Pinched doses of laudanum
Longing for old fecundity of my homeland
Curses to this mirage!
A bottle of ancient Chiraz
A smattering of distant applause
Is ringing in my poor ears
On the old left bank
My baby in a charabanc
Riding up the width and length
Of the Champs Elysees
If only summer rain would fall
On the houses and the boulevards
And the sidewalk bagatelles it’s like a dream
With the roar of cars
And the lulling of the cafe bars
The sweetly sleeping sweeping of the Seine
Lord I don’t know if I’ll ever be back again
If only summer rain would fall
On the houses and the boulevards
And the sidewalk bagatelles it’s like a dream
With the roar of cars
And the lulling of the cafe bars
The sweetly sleeping sweeping of the Seine
Lord I don’t know if I’ll ever be back again.