Manuscript - Al Stewart

[00:13.78]Prince louis battenberg is burning the admiralty lights down low
[00:20.13]Silently sifting through papers sealed with a crown
[00:29.04]Admiral lord fisher is writing to churchill calling for more dreadnoughts
[00:35.94]The houses in hackney are all falling down
[00:48.27]And my grandmother sits on the beach in the days before the war
[00:55.06]Young girl writing her diary while time seems to pause
[01:03.72]Watching the waves as they come one by one to die on the shore
[01:12.36]Kissing the feet of england
[01:36.91]Oh the lights of saint petersburg come on as usual
[01:41.479996]Although the air seems charged with a strangeness of late
[01:46.729996]Yet there's nothing to touch
[01:51.979996]And the tsar in his great winter palace
[01:55.33]Has called for the foreign news
[01:58.619995]An archduke was shot down in bosnia but nothing much
[02:11.66]And my grandmother sits before the mirror
[02:14.94]In the days before the war
[02:18.38]Smiling a secret smile as she goes to the door
[02:26.7]And the young man rides off in his carriage homeward once more
[02:34.11]And the sun sets gently on england
[02:59.08]Ah the day we decided to drive down to worthing
[03:03.64]It rained and rained
[03:05.93]Giving us only a minute to stand by the sea
[03:14.17]And crunching my way through the shingles
[03:17.65]It seemed there was nothing changed
[03:20.70999]Though the jetty was maybe more scarred that I'd known it to be
[03:33.64]And mandi and I stood and stared at the overcast sky
[03:40.05]Where ten years ago we had stood my grandfather and I
[03:50.62]And the waves still rushed in as they had the year that he died
[03:58.09]And it seemed that my lifetime was shrunken and lost in the tide
[04:04.66]As it rose and fell on the side of england
[04:35.5]Prince louis battenberg is burning the admiralty lights