Darby's Castle

(Kris Kristofferson)



See the ruin 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 blacken stones

And the roof that fell before the beans 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 soul obsession.



Oh, it took three hundred days for the timbers to be raised

And the siluet 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 as he laid his pencil down

And 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 siluet 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...