Al Stewart - Manuscript lyrics

Prince Louis Battenberg is burning the Admiralty lights down low

Silently sifting through papers sealed with a crown

Admiral Lord Fisher is writing to Churchill, calling for more Dreadnoughts

The houses in Hackney are all falling down

And my grandmother sits on the beach in the days before the war

Young girl writing her diary, while time seems to pause

Watching the waves as they come one by one to die on the shore

Kissing the feet of England

Oh the lights of Saint Petersburg come on as usual

Although the air seems charged with a strangeness of late, yet there's nothing to touch

And the Tsar in his great Winter Palace has called for the foreign news

An archduke was shot down in Bosnia, but nothing much

And my grandmother sits before the mirror in the days before the war

Smiling a secret smile as she goes to the door

And the young man rides off in his carriage, homeward once more

And the sun sets gently on England

Ah the day we decided to drive down to Worthing, it rained and rained

Giving us only a minute to stand by the sea

And crunching my way through the shingles, it seemed there was nothing changed

Though the jetty was maybe more scarred that I'd known it to be

And Mandi and I stood and stared at the overcast sky

Where ten years ago we had stood, my Grandfather and I

And the waves still rushed in as they had the year that he died

And it seemed that my lifetime was shrunken and lost in the tide

As it rose and fell on the side of England

Prince Louis Battenberg is burning the Admiralty lights