Ballad of Gregory Gregory


In merry old England, down Lincolnshire way,
There’s a manor that’s one of a kind,
Made of Ancaster sandstone and Nottingham clay,
Some of the finest that’s mined.
Men break their backs and their hands and their brains,
And stain the hot stones with their sweat,
All for the love of a woman in chains,
It’s a love a man lives to regret.

(Chorus)
Gregory Gregory, rise up from your tomb.
Your manor’s turned silent and violently cold.
Can’t you hear the bells ringing the song of the groom?
And your story still waits to be told.

They say that the watchmaker’s blind as a brick,
Of that I’ve no reason to doubt.
We wake up in sorrow and we make ourselves sick
For the things that we can’t figure out.
A man loves a woman, a love unreturned,
Which makes him love her all the more.
If you give him a dollar for each lesson unlearned,
His money could feed all the poor.

Chorus

From his window he watched the black steeple impale
The setting sun like a balloon.
Then darkness descended all over the vale
With never a hint of a moon.
He crumpled the letter and he fed it to the flame,
Then he climbed up the clock tower tall.
You know he’d have jumped when he cried out her name
If he felt God was watching at all.

Chorus

So he lived out his life in his manor house grim
And his footsteps they echoed the halls.
And at nights when her memory was heavy on him,
He sat and just stared at the walls.
But ain’t it a pity, now Gregory’s gone.
He been dead as these stones for so long.
But the comets and the planets and the stars linger on
And the galaxies mock him in song.

Chorus

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