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The homecoming fanfare is echoing still
Now tapping on tables
And sensing a chill
Poor families expecting loved one's return
Only summon some charlatan spectre
Oh, when will they learn?
You hung the moon
From a gallows in the sky
Choked out the light
From his blue lunar eye
The shore is a parchment
The sea has no tide
Since he was taken from my side
The lines of the fallen are viewed through a glass
But you cannot touch them at all
Or hear their footfall just as they go past
The drunken ground is where they are bound
You hung the moon
From a gallows in the sky
Put out the light in his blue lunar eye
The shore is a parchment
The sea has no tide
Since he was taken from my side
So slap out his terrors
And sneer at his tears
We deal with deserters like this
From the breech to the barrel, the bead we will level
Break earth with a shovel, quick march on the double
Lower him shallow like tallow down in the abyss
You hung the moon
From a gallows in the sky
Choked out the light in his blue lunar eye
The shore is a parchment
The sea has no tide
Since he was taken from my side
A Drawing Room In Pimlico, London - 1919
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“Sometimes a song arrives all at once, like this song I wrote on a train the other day, ‘You Hung The Moon’. It’s about a family trying to contact a shell-shocked young man who may have been shot as a coward. They are using a glass and a table and the advice of a charlatan. They did that kind of thing back then.” — Newbury Today interview published April 16, 2009.
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