EMPTY SKY (1969)
Empty Sky
(Elton John/Bernie Taupin)
I'm not a rat to be spat upon,
Locked up in this room.
Those bars that look towards the sun
At night look towards the moon.
Every day the swallows play
In the clouds of love –
Make me wish that I had wings,
Take me high above.
And I looked high,
Saw the empty sky,
If I could only –
Could only fly.
I'd drift with them
In endless space
But no man flies
From this place.
At night I lie upon my bench
And stare towards the stars,
The cold night air comes creeping in,
And home seems oh, so far.
If I could only swing
Upon those twinkling dots above,
I'd look down from the heavens
Upon the ones I love.
Hey, the lucky locket
Hangs around your precious neck,
Some luck I ever got with you,
And I wouldn't like to bet
That sooner or later you'll own
Just one half of this land
By shining your eyes on the wealth
Of every man.
Just send up my love,
Ain't seen nothing but tears,
Now I've got myself
In this room for years.
Val-hala
(Elton John/Bernie Taupin)
The seadogs have all sailed their ships
Into the docks of dawn,
While the sirens sit
And comb their hair
And twiddle with their thumbs.
Oh! Thor above the mountain,
Look down upon your children;
This is their heaven,
Where they're told
To bring their galleons.
Seek, you find your place with me,
Men of iron, men of steel;
Only the brave hear the hammers ring
In the courts of the Queens,
In the halls of the Kings.
You can come to Val-hala
In your own time,
Come to Val-hala,
Seek and you will find
Valhalla.
There's long-boats in the harbour
Which arrive there every hour
With the souls of the heroes
Whose blood lies on the flowers.
And this heaven is the home
Of every man who loves his sword,
And he uses it for freedom
To preach the word of Thor.
Western Ford Gateway
(Elton John/Bernie Taupin)
It's hard to feel what's in your head
Where the gas lamps grow
And the garbage blows
Around the paper stands.
And a baby cried
And I saw a light
And I wondered where
And I wondered why
There'd be a loss of life
Down here tonight.
Down on Western Ford Gateway,
That's a place where the dead say
That a man lives no more
Than his fair share of days,
Down on Western Ford Gateway.
It flowed upon the cobbled floor
For the bottle's dead,
And they're drunk again
By the tavern door.
Hymn 2000
(Elton John/Bernie Taupin)
She chose the soft centre
And took it to bed with her mother,
And the ideal confusion
Was just an illusion
To gain further news of her brother.
And the comfort of mother
Was just an appeal for protection,
For the cat from next door
Was found later at four
In surgical dissection.
And I don't want to be
The son of any freak
Who for a chocolate centre
Can take you off the street.
For soon they'll plough the desert,
And God knows where I'll be,
Collecting submarine numbers
On the main street of the sea.
The Vicar is thicker,
And I just can't see through to him,
For his cardinal sings
A collection of hymns,
And a collection of coins
Is made after.
And who wrote the Bible,
Was it Judas or Pilate?
Well one cleans his hands
While the other one hangs,
But still I continue to stand.
Lady, What’s Tomorrow?
(Elton John/Bernie Taupin)
Look up, little brother –
Can you see the clover?
No, not over there, a little bit left,
And over there.
Now look and see the lilac tree,
The lily pond, the skylark's song,
The open air, but no one cares
If branches live and die out there.
Remember when you were nine
And I was ten,
We would run into the woods?
No, we never will again.
And, lady, what's tomorrow,
What's tomorrow anyway?
If it's not the same as now,
It's the same as yesterday.
Yes, lady, what's tomorrow,
Will it be the same as now,
Will the farmer push the pen,
Will the writer pull the plough?
Look up, little brother –
Can you see the clover?
Oh, sorry but it's over,
Now there's concrete and no clover.
Sails
(Elton John/Bernie Taupin)
I viewed in my presence
My hand on my forehead,
And sighting the liners
Of mad merchant seamen
In search of the living,
Or the spices of China.
Lucy walked gently
Between the damp barrels,
And shut out my eyes
With the width of her fingers,
Said she'd guessed the number
Of bales in the back-room.
While the sea-gulls were screaming
Lucy was eating;
Then we hauled up our colours
The way The Mother had told us,
And together we just watched the sails.
‘Lucy,’ I said
In a passage of cotton kegs,
‘Can we hold hands,
I'm sure that it's warmer?’
Then the gulls ate the crumbs
Of Lucy's sandwich.
The Scaffold
(Elton John/Bernie Taupin)
In Orient where wise I was
To please the way I live,
Come give the beggar chance at hand,
His life is on his lip.
Three score a thousand times
Where once in Amazon,
Where Eldorado holds the key,
No keeper holds my hand.
Unchain the gate of solitude,
The ruler says you run,
Run hard unto the scaffold high,
Your chance to jump the gun.
Oh, how high the scaffold grows!
The plant life of your widow
In black-lace curtains brought you near,
From out the plate-glass window.
The Minotaur with bloody hands
Is enraged by the sun,
Caged he by the corpses,
Brought forth by the dawn.
In Orient is as I told,
The buckshee hangman swears,
For open crypts to silence,
Nylon knots to sway by prayer.
In Orient where wise I was
To please the way I live,
Come give the beggar chance at hand,
His life is on his lip.
Skyline Pigeon
(Elton John/Bernie Taupin)
Turn me loose from your hands,
Let me fly to distant lands,
Over green fields, trees and mountains,
Flowers and forest fountains,
Home along the lanes of the skyway –
For this dark and lonely room
Projects a shadow cast in gloom,
And my eyes are mirrors
Of the world outside;
Thinking of the way
That the wind can turn the tide,
And these shadows turn
From purple into grey.
For just a Skyline Pigeon,
Dreaming of the open,
Waiting for the day
He can spread his wings
And fly away again;
Fly away, Skyline Pigeon, fly
Towards the dreams
You've left so very far behind.
Just let me wake up in the morning,
To the smell of new-mown hay,
To laugh and cry, to live and die,
In the brightness of my day.
I want to hear the pealing bells
Of distant churches sing,
But most of all please free me
From this aching metal ring,
And open out this cage towards the sun.
Gulliver
(Elton John/Bernie Taupin)
Gulliver's gone
To the final command of his master;
His watery eyes had washed
All the hills with his laughter;
And the seasons can change
All the light from the grey to the dim,
But the light in his eyes
Will see no more so bright
As the sheep
That he locked in the pen.
There's four feet of ground
In front of the barn
That's sun-baked and rain-soaked
And part of the farm;
But now it lies empty,
So cold and so bare,
Gulliver's gone
But his memory lies there.
By passing the doors of his life
Was a stage I remember,
And in later years
He would cease to bare teeth to a stranger;
For sentiment touched him,
As cyclamen holds him,
And later men came from the town,
Who said, ‘Clear the child
This won't take a while,’
And Gulliver's gone with the dawn.