Hanging Gardens

(Peter Lastima)

This is a torch song - of the kind sung, once, by the likes of Dean Martin or Tony Bennet or perhaps even Sinatra, in smoky night clubs, or, with a bit of adjustment, by Eartha Kitt or Ella Fitzgerald. The sequence of flight, pursuit and reconciliation is complete but here the setting is a classical one - the couple having found their way home to a Babylon set way back in antiquity.

Please note: This text is protected by copyright and may not be copied or used for other purposes - even in parts or in revised form - without the expressed permission by Premium Lyrics.

Select your license (10 out of 10 licenses still left)

License group 1: non-commercial use

License group 2: commercial use with limited right of reproduction

License group 3: commercial use with unlimited right of reproduction

Here you find more information about our Licensing models.

Add to cart Wishlist

We are complete:
On these terraces of junipers, 
The city at our feet, 
How bittersweet, , 

For now I know
Why these groves could never hold you, 
Why you shattered the tableau, 
And left me so,
So long ago 

Chorus: 
My Odyssey, 
Has been to chase you and to pace you 
And be ready to embrace you 
Over mountains, down the valleys,
Through the trees;
Our Odyssey, 
With its canvases unfurled 
Of all the wonders of the world
Has set you free, 
It seems to me

Quite unafraid, 
You breathed the incense in the forest 
Of the pillars of the Maid,
And would have stayed….

It was your star, 
Which led you on across the Hellespont 
And west through Skavala, 
To Attica 
To Attica

Chorus 

And I pursued
You through a violet-painted city
Where I grazed your solitude, 
And was subdued

We drank the wine, 
Where the statues of the goddesses 
Gaze down upon the shrines, 
Above the pines, 
Above the pines. 

Chorus

And with delight, 
You saw the fires of the lighthouse
Where the ocean met the night, 
The geese in flight

Hand in hand 
We travelled south along the river 
Through the lone and level sands
Of antique lands, 
Of antique lands

Chorus 

And there your turned, 
And set you face towards the morning 
Where the clouds of amber burned, 
For you had learned…

And come to know 
That the road would lead us homeward
Wheresoever we might go, 
And it was so 
So long ago,

You led me home, 
So many years ago. 

Chorus +

….Has set you free, 
To face the furies and their taunts 
That this was never meant to be, 
Has set you free, 
To stay with me. 
© Peter Lastima 2019