Sting Lyrics

Album: Best Of-Fields Of Gold

All This Time Lyrics

I looked out across

 The river today

 I saw a city in the fog and an old church tower

 Where the seagulls play

 I saw the sad shire horses walking home

 In the sodium light

 I saw two priests on the ferry

 October geese on a cold winter's night

 

 And all this time, the river flowed

 Endlessly to the sea

 

 Two priests came round our house tonight

 One young, one old, to offer prayers for the dying

 To serve the final rite

 One to learn, one to teach

 Which was the cold wind blows

 Fussing and flapping in priestly black

 Like a murder of crows

 

 And all this time, the river flowed

 Endlessly to the sea

 If I had my way I'd take a boat from the river

 And I'd bury the old man,

 I'd bury him at sea

 

 Blessed are the poor, for they shall inherit the earth

 Better to be poor than a fat man in the eye of a needle

 And as these words were spoken I swore I hear

 The old man laughing

 'What good is a used up world and how could it be

 Worth having'

 

 And all this time the river flowed

 Endlessly like a silent tear

 And all this time the river flowed

 Father, if Jesus exists,

 Then how come he never lived here

 

 The teachers told us, the Romans built this place

 They built a wall and a temple, an edge of the empire

 Garrison town,

 They lived and they died, they prayed to their gods

 But the stone gods did not make a sound

 And their empire crumbled, 'til all that was left

 Were the stones the workmen found

 

 And all this time the river flowed

 In the falling light of a northern sun

 If I had my way I'd take a boat from the river

 Men go crazy in congregations

 But they only get better

 One by one

 One by one...