Stornoway Follow

It was late last night
And all the band were sleeping
It was late last night
I was listening to
To the generators humming
To the tent-zipping drunk
Quipping, guy-rope tripping

And in the gathering dew
I was lucid as a floodlight
I was thinking of you
But now I'm back here before you
You can see me shaking
Cos in that moment I knew
I just knew, I just knew, I just knew

Forty seasons have flown
Since I first sat down beside you
In a crowd on our own
And how one person could thrill me
Occupy me and fulfill me
I could never have known
I could never have known

How in the first of our autumns
We'd be falling so steeply
We could share so completely
How in the third of our summers
When you first tried to leave me
You could cut me so deeply
I could never have known

And on my wilderness journeys
With your compass still in me
All the shelters were empty
Through the longest of winters
When I called you downriver
But you gave me no answer
And I feared for my mind

Until the first signs of springtime
You were sick and I saw you
And how much you'd missed me
Now in our eleventh autumn
You are blonde from the summer
And I'm back here before you
And you see me shaking

Will you go with me, my love?
From here together
From this quiet rented house

Will you go with me, my love?
To face together
Every rise and every slow decline

Will you go with me
Through dream and fantasy?
Through the open fields
And tangled valleys

Will you go with me
Through grief and ecstasy?
And every shade between
The cold morning stars
And the deep blue sea