| Take the train down Friday next,
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| In summer hat and linen dress
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| Hail a taxi at the station
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| There will be artichokes and cabbages,
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| Sweet honeycombs and radishes
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| To feed your grateful nation
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| Bring paper, easel, pen and ink
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| To set up on the lawn
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| Where summer mornings brim with light
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| And evenings fill with birdsong
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| Between the wars
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| Ginger cakes are served with tea
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| Your lovers orbit endlessly
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| And your children march like soldiers
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| Their nets for catching butterflies
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| Fill up with wind and sit up high
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| Like rifles at their shoulders
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| But this is where you fled the world
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| This is where you gather
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| Take up take up your skirts and twirl
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| Like angels through the asters
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| Between the wars
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| A telegram arrives from Spain
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| The earth falls off its axis
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| Grief hands down a kind of pain
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| You can’t prepare or practice
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| You paint the tables, paint the walls
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| The mantles, mirrors, lamps and halls
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| Paint every single surface
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| No corner here will go untouched
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| By loss and love and by your brush
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| Such emptiness is worthless
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| There are no ghosts except the ones
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| Leaving us behind
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| We wave and shout come back come back
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| Frozen now in time
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| Between the wars |