Darby's Castle

(album: What Am I Gonna Do? - 1972)

See the ruins on the hill where the smoke is hanging still
Like an echo of an age long forgotten
There's a story of a home crushed beneath those blackened stones
And the roof that fell before the beams were rotten.

Seems old Darby loved his wife and he labored all his life
To provide her with material possessions
And he built for her a home of the finest wood and stone
And the building soon became his sole obsession.

Oh, it took three hundred days for the timbers to be raised
And the silhouette was seen for miles around
And the gables reached as high as the eagles in the sky
But it only took one night to bring it down
When Darby's castle tumbled to the ground.

Though they shared the common bed there was precious little said
In the moments that were set aside for sleeping
For his busy dreams were filled with the rooms he'd yet to build
And he never heard young Helen Darby weeping.

Then one night he heard the sound and as he laid his pencil down
He traced it to her door and turned the handle
And the pale light of the moon through the window of her room
Split the shadows where two bodies lay in tangle.

Oh, it took three hundred days for the timbers to be raised
And the silhouette was seen for miles around
And the gables reached as high as the eagles in the sky
But it only took one night to bring it down
When Darby's castle tumbled to the ground...