The Legionnaire's Lament - The Decemberists

I’m a legionnaire

Camel in disrepair

Hoping for a frigidaire to come passing by

I am on reprieve

Lacking my joie de vive

Missing my gay Paris

In the desert dry

And I wrote my girl

Told her I would not return

I’ve terribly taken a turn

For the worse now I fear

It’s been a year or more

Since they shipped me to this foreign shore

Fighting in a foreign war

So far away from my home

If only summer rain would fall

On the houses and the boulevards

And the sidewalk bagatelles it' like a dream

With the roar of cars

And the lulling of the cafe bars

The sweetly sleeping sweeping of the Seine

Lord I don’t know if I’ll ever be back again

Medicating in the sun

Pinched doses of laudanum

Longing for old fecundity of my homeland

Curses to this mirage!

A bottle of ancient Chiraz

A smattering of distant applause

Is ringing in my poor ears

On the old left bank

My baby in a charabanc

Riding up the width and length

Of the Champs Elysees

If only summer rain would fall

On the houses and the boulevards

And the sidewalk bagatelles it’s like a dream

With the roar of cars

And the lulling of the cafe bars

The sweetly sleeping sweeping of the Seine

Lord I don’t know if I’ll ever be back again

If only summer rain would fall

On the houses and the boulevards

And the sidewalk bagatelles it’s like a dream

With the roar of cars

And the lulling of the cafe bars

The sweetly sleeping sweeping of the Seine

Lord I don’t know if I’ll ever be back again.