Roy Harper Day

I'm currently listening to Harper's fourth album, Flat Baroque and Berserk, released in 1970, and sought out the wonderful lyrics to Tom Tiddler's Ground, reminding me of the poet that so fully complements the musician.

Listening to Song of the Ages [itself lyrically so sweet] I was reminded that back then I first heard Roy on sampler lps - and the radio/TV to a degree - but I didn't have a Roy Harper album for some time, and this song was on the Harvest double sampler Picnic. But the first Roy Harper song I think I will have heard was on the 1968 CBS sampler The Rock Machine Turns You On, and it was Nobody's Got Any Money In The Summer from his second and 1967 album Come Out Fighting Ghengis Smith. Loved it then; love it now.

And right now, the lyrics for Song of the Ages,

there's a house on a hillside in a picture book  
where he stands with his mother as I stop and look  
he's a child of the northlands with his long golden hair  
and his smile running wild

in the snow by the campfire where the nights are long  
you can hear his daddy sing a very old song  
and his mummy's a beautiful lady in love  
and she washes his eye with the fair stars above

 
song of the ages

and there's a ship set for sailing the rolling sea  
there's a little hand waving goodbye to me 
fare thee well my loved ones, I'll see you soon  
I'll be laughing along some old afternoon