For our first installment of The Poetry of Rock n' Roll 2021, let's examine a song by folk singer-songwriter Eliza Gilkyson. This song, "Pilgrims" was released on her 1987 album of the same name and features a tense, compact study of one's place (and inner psychological topography) in the world as compared with those who came before.
Pilgrims
by Eliza Gilkyson
Pilgrims for freedom and liberty
These days you look so clumsy to me
Primitive sailors, quenching your thirst on the brine
Risking your reckless lives on the sea
Crossing the ocean to the land of the free
Oceans could never quench such a thirst as mine
What were you looking for out on the sea
A constant source of mystery
It was a pretty good way to steal your heart from your misery
These days it's harder to stay on the line
It could all be conquered, it could all be mine
It makes me hungry, boys, for a world I've never known
Oceans are easy, so is the land
It's me I just don't understand
Call for the captain, this time I really wanna go home
I know what I long to see:
A constant source of mystery
Some perfect way to steal my heart from misery
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