Artist: Jethro Tull Album: Stormwatch {1979}

Black and viscous, bound to cure blue lethargy
Sugar-plum petroleum for energy
Tightrope-balanced payments need
A small reprieve, oh, please believe we want to be
In North Sea, in North Sea Oil

New-found wealth sits on the shelf of yesterday
Hot-air balloon inflation soon will make you pay
Riggers rig and diggers dig
Their shallow grave, but we'll be saved and what we crave
Is North Sea, is North Sea Oil

Viking, Forties, Fisher - north-west, backing west, four to five
Dogger, German Bight - north-west, five or six, occasionally gale eight

Prices boom in Aberdeen and London town
Ten more years to lay the fears, erase the frown
Before we are all nuclear
The better way, oh, let us pray - we want to stay
In North Sea, in North Sea, in North Sea Oil

Orion, won't you give me your star sign
Orion, get up on the skyline
I'm high on my hill and I feel fine
Orion, let's sip the heaven's heady wine

Orion light your lights, come guard the open spaces
From the black horizon to the pillow where I lie
Your faithful dog shines brighter than its lord and master
Your jeweled sword twinkles as the world rolls by
So, come up singing above the cloudy cover
Stare through at people who toss fitful in their sleep
I know you're watching as the old gent by the station
Scuffs his toes on old fag packets lying in the street

Orion, won't you give me your star sign
Orion, get up on the skyline
I'm high on my hill and I feel fine
Orion, let's sip the heaven's heady wine

And silver shadows flick across the closing bistro
Sweet waiters link their arms and patter down the street
Their words lost, blowing on cold winds in darkest Chelsea
Prime years fly fading with each young heart's beat

Orion, won't you make me a star sign
Orion, get up on the skyline
I'm high on your love and I feel fine
Orion, let's sip the heaven's heady wine

And young girls shiver as they wait by lonely bus-stops
After sad parties, no one to take them home
To greasy bed-sitters and make a late-night play
For lost virginity a thousand miles away

Orion, won't you make me a star sign
Orion, get up on the skyline
I'm high on your love and I feel fine
Orion, let's sip the heaven's heady wine
On the skyline, Orion

As the dawn sun breaks over sleepy gardens
I'll be here to do all things to comfort you
Oh, and though I've been away, left you alone this way
Why don't you come awake and let your first smile take me home

The shadows in the park were longer yesterday
And Lady Luck stood still, waiting for the kill
Oh, and on a jumbo ride over seas grey, deep and wide
I flew for heaven's sake and let the angel take me home

Down steep and narrow lanes I see the chimneys smoking
Above the golden fields, know what the robin feels
In his summer jamboree, all elements agree
In sweet and stormy blend, midwife to winds that send me home

"Darlings are you ready for the long winter's fall?"
Said the lady in her parlor, said the butler in the hall
"Is there time for another?" cried the drunkard in his sleep
"Not likely," said the little child, "what's done the Lord can keep."
And the vicar stands a-praying and the television dies
As the white dot flickers and is gone and no one stops to cry
Dark Ages shaking the dead
Closed pages better not read
Cold rages, they burn in your head

The big jet rumbles over runway miles that scar the patchwork green
Where slick tycoons and rich buffoons have opened up the seam
Of golden nights and champagne flights - ad-man overkill
And in the haze, consumer crazed, we take the sugar pill
Dark Ages shaking the dead
Closed pages better not read
Cold rages, they burn in your head

Jagged fires mark the picket lines, the politicians weep
And mealy-mouthed down corridors of power on tip-toe creep
Come and see bureaucracy make its final heave
And let the new disorder through while senses take their leave
Dark Ages shaking the dead
Closed pages better not read
Cold rages, they burn in your head

Families, screaming, line the streets and put the windows through
In corner shops where keepers kept the country's life-blood blue
Take their pick and try the trick, with loaves and fishes shared
And the vicar shouts as the lights go out and no one really cares
Dark Ages shaking the dead
Closed pages better not read
Cold rages, they burn in your head

"Darlings are you ready for the long winter's fall?"
Said the lady in her parlor, said the butler in the hall
Dark Ages shaking the dead
Closed pages better not read
Cold rages, they burn in your head

INSTRUMENTAL

She wore a black tiara, rare gems upon her fingers
And she came from distant waters where northern lights explode
To celebrate the dawning of the new wastes of winter
Gathering royal momentum on the icy road
With chill mists swirling like petticoats in motion
Sighted on horizons for ten thousand years
The lady of the ice sounds a deathly distant rumble
To Titanic-breaking children lost in melting crystal tears

Oh, sunshine take me, now, away from here
I'm a needle on a spiral in a groove
And the turntable spins as the last waltz begins
And the weatherman says, "Something's on the move."

Capturing black pieces in a glass-fronted museum
The white queen rolls on the chessboard of the dawn
Squeezing through the valleys, pausing briefly in the corries
The Ice-Mother mates and a new age is born

Oh, sunshine take me, now, away from here
I'm a needle on a spiral in a groove
And the turntable spins as the last waltz begins
And the weatherman says, "Something's on the move."

Driving all before her, unstoppable, unstraining
Her cold creaking mass follows reindeer down
Thin spreading fingers seek to embrace the sill-warm bundles
That huddle on the doorsteps of a white London town

Oh, sunshine take me, now, away from here
I'm a needle on a spiral in a groove
And the turntable spins as the last waltz begins
And the weatherman says, "Something's on the move."

She wore a black tiara, rare gems upon her fingers
And she came from distant waters where northern lights explode
To celebrate the dawning of the new wastes of winter
Gathering royal momentum on the icy road

Oh, sunshine take me, now, away from here
I'm a needle on a spiral in a groove
And the turntable spins as the last waltz begins
And the weatherman says, "Something's on the move."

Hair stands high on the cat�s back like a ridge of threatening hills
Sheepdogs howl, make tracks and growl, their tails hanging low
And young children falter in their games at the altar of life�s hide and seek
Between tall pillars, where Sunday-night killers, in grey raincoats, peek

I�ll be coming again like an old dog in pain
Blown through the eye of the hurricane
Down to the stones where old ghosts play

Misty colors unfold a backcloth cold, fine tapestry of silk
I draw around me like a cloak and soundless glide, a-drifting
On eddies whirled in beech leaves furled, brown-gold they fly
In the warm mesh of sunlight, sifting now from a cloudless sky

I�ll be coming again like an old dog in pain
Blown through the eye of the hurricane
Down to the stones where old ghosts play
Yes, I�ll be coming again like an old dog in pain
Blown through the eye of the hurricane
Down to the stones where old ghosts play

Six

The weather's on the change
Lines joint in faint discord and the stormwatch brews
A concert of kings as the white sea snaps
At the heels of a soft prayer whispered


Clear light on a slick palm as I misdeal the day
Slip the night from a shaved pack, make a marked card play
Call twilight hours down - from a heaven - from a heaven home
High above the highest bidder - for the good Lord's - for the good Lord's throne
In the wee hours I'll meet you down by Dun Ringill
Oh, and we'll watch the old gods play
By Dun Ringill - by Dun Ringill, by Dun Ringill
By Dun Ringill

We'll wait in stone circles - till the force comes - till the force comes through
Lines joint in faint discord - and the stormwatch - and the stormwatch brews
A concert of kings - as the white sea - as the white sea snaps
At the heels of a soft prayer whispered
In the wee hours I'll meet you down by Dun Ringill
Oh, and I'll take you quickly
Oh, by Dun Ringill - by Dun Ringill, by Dun Ringill
By Dun Ringill - by Dun Ringill, by Dun Ringill
Oh, by Dun Ringill

Old lady with a barrow, life near ending
Standing by the harbor wall, warm wishes sending
Children on the cold sea swell, not fishers of men
Gone to chase away the last herring, come empty home again
So, come all you lovers of the good life on your supermarket run
And set a sail of your own devising and be there when the Dutchman comes
Oh, you better be there when the Dutchman comes

Wee girl in a straw hat from far east, warring
Sad cargo of an old ship, young bodies whoring
Slow ocean hobo, ports closed to her crew
No hope of immigration, keep on passing through
So, come all you lovers of the good life, your children playing in the sun
Then set a sympathetic flag a-flying, oh, and be there when the Dutchman comes
Oh, you better be there when the Dutchman comes

Death grinning like a scarecrow, Flying Dutchman
Seagull pilots flown from nowhere, oh, try and touch one
As she slips in on the full tide and the harbor-master yells
All hands vanished with the captain and no one left, the tale to tell
So, come all you lovers of the good life, look around you, can you see
Staring ghostly from the mirror, it's the Dutchman you will be
Floating slowly out to sea, oh, in a misty misery, oh, oh

INSTRUMENTAL