Dagsluiter van de dag: All our days / Who knows where the time goes

We search for everything
Keeping what we would win
Orchids or tiny flowers
Wooden huts or ivory towers
Centuries or hours

Dark are the winter days
Holy in many ways
Vaults of time unshaken
Whilst as through them we are taken
Sleeping forests wake
Ice melts on the lake
Birds begin in making their way back home

The frost and the fire goes
East winds and winter snows
Sun upon the daffodils
Dancing on the verdant hills
Lambs in the fields

Warmer grows the morning sun
Days of youthfulness and fun
The prime of the year begun
The song of summer to be sung
Everything is one
Working day is done
Watch the river running through our lives

How slowly the colours change
We feel the drops of rain
Mists of evening rise again
We rarely stroll the shadowed lanes
As autumn night draws in

We sit upon the sand
Warmth draining from the land
Watching the ruby sun
Setting on the ocean
The echoes in the caves
The flame upon the waves
Memories for saving all our days

Dit is zo’n beetje de afsluiter van Sandy Denny’s werk, 1977. Niet gepland, maar het Hogere Plan van de Schikgodinnen wilde het wel zo.
Het orkest dat zo’n grote rol speelt in deze uitvoering plaatst het lied met zijn natuurlyrische zoniet bijna mystieke tekst in de traditie van Engelse romantiek, Vaughan Williams, Curzon, Delius… Past dit niet bij de folkzangeres? Vergelijk de teksten.

Across the evening sky, all the birds are leaving
Oh but then you know, it was time for them to go
By the winter fire, I will still be dreaming
I do not count the time
for who knows where the time goes?
Who knows where the time goes?
Sad,deserted shore
your fickle friends are leaving
oh, but then you know it was time for them to go
But I will still be here
I have no thought of leaving
I do not count the time
for who knows where the time goes?
I know I’m not alone
while my love is near me
I know that its so until its time to go
All the storms in Winter and the birds in Spring again
I do not count the time
For who knows where the time goes?
who knows where the time goes?
who knows where the time goes?

De eerstuitgebrachte versie staat op een LP waarop de naam van de Strawbs voorkomt, 1967, maar hier komt niet een hele groep aan te pas: