McArthur's Park? They DO NOT make them like this any more

I can't quite recall why I ended up here.  Ah ... yes I do.  Laurence (a Facebook friend from Sydney University) posted some line from T H White's Once And Future King.  I posted a link to Richard Harris singing the words at the end of Camelot, the 1968 movie version of the stage musical in which he also played King Arthur.  That started one of those hypertext link journeys through Youtube.

I came across Richard Harris singing Jimmy Webb's song (except Richard Harris insisted on the possessive form).  It was 1968.  He had an enormous hit with a single more than twice the length of standard hit singles.  I was eleven years old.  I loved it although I had no idea what it was about.  I wasn't alone in that regard.  I remember discussion about drug-related symbolism; maybe it was an acid trip.  That reading seems so quaint now.  Lost love people.  How could anyone have thought otherwise?



Spring was never waiting for us, girl
It ran one step ahead
As we followed in the dance
Between the parted pages and were pressed,
In love's hot, fevered iron
Like a striped pair of pants

MacArthur Park is melting in the dark
All the sweet, green icing flowing down...
Someone left the cake out in the rain
and I don't think that I can take it
'cause it took so long to bake it
and I'll never have that recipe again
Oh, no!

I recall the yellow cotton dress
foaming like a wave
on the ground around your knees
The birds, like tender babies in your hands
and the old men playing checkers by the trees

MacArthur Park is melting in the dark
All the sweet, green icing flowing down...
Someone left the cake out in the rain
and I don't think that I can take it
'cause it took so long to bake it
and I'll never have that recipe again
Oh, no!

(BRIDGE)
There will be another song for me
For I will sing it
There will be another dream for me
Someone will bring it
I will drink the wine while it is warm
and never let you catch me looking at the sun
And after all the loves of my life
after all the loves of my life
You'll still be the one.

I will take my life into my hands
and I will use it
I will win the worship in their eyes
and I will lose it
I will have the things that I desire
and my passion flow like rivers through the sky.
And after all the loves of my life
After all the loves of my life
I'll be thinking of you
and wondering why.

MacArthur Park is melting in the dark
All the sweet, green icing flowing down...
Someone left the cake out in the rain
and I don't think that I can take it
'cause it took so long to bake it
and I'll never have that recipe again
Oh, no!
.