Van Morrison - Let The Slave Lyrics
(incorporating the price of experience. text: william blake)Let the slave grinding at the mill run out into the fieldLet him look up into the heavens and laugh in the bnght airLet the inchained soul, shut up in darkness and in sighingWhose face has never seen a smile in thirty weary yearsRose and look out; his chains are loose, his dungeon doors are open;And let his wife and children return from the oppressors scourgeThey look behind at every step and believe it is a dreamSinging: the sun has left his blackness and has found a fresher morningAnd the fair moon rejoices in the clear and cloudless nightFor empire is no more and now the lion and wolf shall ceaseFor everything that lives is holyFor everything that lives is holyFor everything that lives is holyFor everything that lixes is holyWhat is the price of experience? do men buy it for a song?Or wisdom for a dance in the street? no, it is bought with the priceOf all that a man hath, his house, his wife, his childrenWisdom is sold in the desolate market where none come to buyAnd in the witherd field where the farmer plows for bread in vainIt is an easy thing to triumph in the summers sunAnd in the vintage and to sing on the waggon loaded with cornIt is an easy thing to talk of patience to the afflictedTo speak the laws of prudence to the homeless wandererTo listen to the hungry ravens cry in wintry seasonWhen the red blood is filld with wine and with the marrow of lambsIt is an easy thing to laugh at wrathful elementsTo hear the dog howl at the wintry door, the ox in the slaughter house moan;To see a God on every wind and a blessing on every blastTo hear sounds of love in the thunder storm that destroys our enemies house;To rejoice in the blight that covers his fieldAnd the sickness that cuts off his childrenWhile our olive and vine sing and laugh round our doorAnd our children bring fruits and flowersThen the groan and the dolor are quite forgottenAnd the slave grinding at the millAnd the captive in chains and the poor in the prisonAnd the soldier in the fieldWhen the shatterd bone hath laid him groaning among the happier deadIt is an easy thing to rejoice in the tents of prosperity:Thus could I sing and thus rejoice: but it is not so with me
