Scarborough fair / canticle

Are you going to scarborough fair?
Parsley, sage, rosemary & thyme
Remember me to one who lives there
She once was a true love of mine

Tell her to make me a cambric shirt
(on the side of a hill in the deep forest green)
Parsley, sage, rosemary & thyme
(tracing a sparrow on snow-crested ground)
Without no seams nor needlework
(blankets and bedclothes a child of the mountains)
Then she'll be a true love of mine
(sleeps unaware of the clarion call)

Tell her to find me an acre of land
(on the side of a hill, a sprinkling of leaves)
Parsely, sage, rosemary, & thyme
(washes the grave with silvery tears)
Between the salt water and the sea strand
(a soldier cleans and polishes a gun)
Then she'll be a true love of mine

Tell her to reap it in a sickle of leather
(war bellows, blazing in scarlet battalions)
Parsely, sage, rosemary & thyme
(generals order their soldiers to kill)
And to gather it all in a bunch of heather
(and to fight for a cause they've long ago forgotten)
Then she'll be a true love of mine

Are you going to scarborough fair?
Parsley, sage, rosemary & thyme
Remember me to one who lives there
She once was a true love of mine

• A Simple Desultory Philippic
• A Simple Desultory Phillipic
• Scarborough Fair / Canticle
• The Big Bright Green Pleasure Machine