Roger Miller Darby's Castle lyrics

See the ruin on the hill where the smoke is hanging still
Like an echo of an age long forgotten there's a story of a home
Crushed beneath those blackened stones
And the roof that fell before the beams were rotten

Seems old Darby loved his wife and he labored all his life
To provide her with material possessions
And he built for her a home of the finest wood and stone
And the building soon became his sole obsession

Oh, it took three hundred days for the timbers to be raised
And the silhouette was seen for miles around
And the gables reached as high, as the eagles in the sky
But it only took one night to bring it down
When Darby's castle tumbled to the ground


Though they shared the common bed there was precious little said
In the moments that were set aside for sleeping
For his busy dreams were filled with the rooms he'd yet to build
And he never heard young Helen Darby weeping

Then one night he heard the sound as he laid his pencil down
And he traced it to her door and turned the handle
And the pale light of the moon through the window of the room
Split the shadows where two bodies lay in tangle

Oh, it took three hundred days