LYRICS

Lay back
I’m on my own here
Follow me
I’m anyone’s
Time lost
You know daddy told me
Remembrances you gave me
Your candle’s cold

To you I speak nonsense
My song it has no rhyme
Here’s pansies, fennel and columbines
I’d give you violets,
but they withered all
when my daddy died

The river’s so calm now
Its beauty more truth than thee
You laid your head on me
and I believed in you
A flower for forgiveness
Thoughts tumble by the cliffside
How they gather moved by madness
Did you love me?

To you I speak nonsense
A wife to you with the ebbing tide
You hoard your columbines
Look at the violets,
and how they withered all
when my daddy died

Poor Ophelia they say
has she lost her mind,
has she lost her way
How I know my fate
I know my time,
all virtue is gone,
my faith in you died
And Iknow what’s in my heart
and the burden that i carry for you
will fall with me as it fell with you
There’s no truth in your words
The sweetness fell in May
And as I stand by the riverside
I call to you crying oh

To you I speak nonsense
The pain I feel you’ll never understand
I wore the fennel, loved your columbines
Here, take the rosemary
and remember me

Lay back
My garlands cradle you
Hold me, my clever one
You loved me once,
or so you told me.
As the murmurs cover my head
I pray to you.

Did I speak nonsense?
My tenders, did they sing to you?
So wear your rue and your columbines
I gave you violets,
and they withered all
when my daddy died.

STORY BEHIND THE SONG:

Some tunes just flow out of you as if you're a conduit...This was one of those.

Once I saw a concert by Nina Simone and was amazed that she would look around while playing piano, and her phrasing seemed so dependent on what she was being inspired to say. Almost like she was picking each note out of the sky and constantly waiting for transmission. I wish I could feel that all of the time, but "Poor Ophelia" definitely does it to me. Basically, if I'm not welling up at the end of the tune, I didn't sing it right!

But I had always been a big Shakespere fan. And "Hamlet" especially always hit me. But the character Ophelia always intrigued me and pissed me off at the same time. Here was Shakespere in some ways making a commentary on the female condition in society at the time, yet treating her in that very condition. Probably genious, still pissed me off. So I decided to write a song from her point of view. What would go through her mind right as she stood at the edge of the river before jumping in. I wanted to give her the power...the last laugh.