Al Stewart - Manuscript

Prince Louis Battenberg is burning the Admiralty lights down low


Silently sifting through papers sealed with a crown


Admiral Lord Fisher is writing to Churchill, calling for more Dreadnoughts


The houses in Hackney are all falling down


And my grandmother sits on the beach in the days before the war


Young girl writing her diary, while time seems to pause


Watching the waves as they come one by one to die on the shore


Kissing the feet of England





Oh the lights of Saint Petersburg come on as usual


Although the air seems charged with a strangeness of late, yet there's nothing to touch


And the Tsar in his great Winter Palace has called for the foreign news


An archduke was shot down in Bosnia, but nothing much


And my grandmother sits before the mirror in the days before the war


Smiling a secret smile as she goes to the door


And the young man rides off in his carriage, homeward once more


And the sun sets gently on England





Ah the day we decided to drive down to Worthing, it rained and rained


Giving us only a minute to stand by the sea


And crunching my way through the shingles, it seemed there was nothing changed


Though the jetty was maybe more scarred that I'd known it to be


And Mandi and I stood and stared at the overcast sky


Where ten years ago we had stood, my Grandfather and I


And the waves still rushed in as they had the year that he died


And it seemed that my lifetime was shrunken and lost in the tide


As it rose and fell on the side of England





Prince Louis Battenberg is burning the Admiralty lights