A Library Burns Down

[Verse 1] He was a dreamer once a boy with dirt on his knees

Chasing every firefly through the cedar and the breeze

Now he's an aged old man in a chair by the pane

Watching winter do its slow work on the lane

[Verse 2] Youth is wasted on the young they always said

We laughed it off and spent it like it grew on a vine

Now I count the silver threads that gather on my head

And wonder who collected all the years that were [Chorus] Where do the years go

Where do they run

Like a bright star going out in the night sky

One by one

Where do the years go

Nobody knows

A library burns down every time somebody goes Old wrinkled hands once held the future of a child

Rocked a cradle hummed a tune and never once looked wild

They built the fences and they planted every row

And the stories that they carried we will never know

[Verse 4] We looked up to our heroes standing tall in the sun

Never thought a single one of them could ever come undone

Now their voices fade like smoke above the field

And the books they wrote are closing and the covers will not yield [Chorus] Where do the years go

Where do they run

Like a bright star going out in the night sky

One by one

Where do the years go

Nobody knows

A library burns down every time somebody goes [Bridge] All the stories we were told

All the memories we hold

Every name and every face

Drifting out of time and place

Oh the tales will never be heard again

Never be heard again

[Verse 5] So I sit here with my coffee growing cold on the sill

Thinking how a life is just a candle on a hill

How it burns so brave against the coming of the night

Then it trembles and it flickers and it gives up the light [Chorus] Where do the years go

Where do they run

Like a bright star going out in the night sky

One by one

Where do the years go

Nobody knows

A library burns down every time somebody goes A library burns down

Mm

Every time somebody goes