Kris Kristofferson Follow

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 blackened stones
And the roof which fell before the beams were rotten

Cecil 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 sole obsession

Oh, it took three hundred days for the timbers to be raised
And the silhouette 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 a 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 Ellen Darby weeping

Then one night he heard a 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 the rooms
Split the shadows where two bodies lay entangled

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