Darby's Castle

See the ruins 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 that 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 the 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 Helen Darby weeping Then one night he heard the sound and as he laid his pencil down He traced it to her door and turned the handle And the pale light of the moon through the window of her room Split the shadows where two bodies lay in tangle Oh it took three hundred days --- Darby's Castle - Bobby Bare